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How to Create a Secure Facility Using Secure

AlphaCard Visitor Pass Secure contains multiple options for verifying the identity of the visitor checking in, helping you ensure that your facility is as secure as possible.

How to Create a Secure Facility

The main ways to set up a secure facility are:

Using biometric search
Using 3rd party visitor screening
Using signable documents
Requiring operator action
Setting up emergency email button
Creating per event barcodes/expiring barcodes

Each of these items can contribute towards keeping your facility as secure as possible. Each of these items can be implemented alone, or in concert, as your needs dictate.

Each of these articles have their own guides on how to setup and implement the system. This article will focus on how to use each of those individual practices can enhance your facilities security, and some of the pros and cons of each type of security. If you have not setup these measures, and wish to know how:

Each of these security measures have positives and negatives. In most cases implementing the feature leads to an increase in security of your facility by limiting who has access to your building, but usually comes with an increase in time required to check in each visitor.

More About Biometric Search

To begin, biometric search requires capturing the fingerprint of each individual visitor at the time they are entered into the system so that they can be searched for in the future.

This does lengthen the enrollment time, since biometric images cannot be imported into AlphaCard Visitor Pass via a jpg or other image file since they do not contain the point of references that are required to search for the image in the database. On the other hand, this ensures that the person who was entered into the system is the only person that can be checked in under that visitor record.

If this security step is enough for you, check-ins can actually be sped up since you can use biometric images to automatically check into the system. All the visitor has to do is walk up to the fingerprint scanner, put their fingerprint onto the reader, and they are now checked in. Alternatively, if you want to combine biometric search with other features, simply turn off the automatic check-in feature. That way you can use biometric search to ensure that the person checking in is correct, but it still leaves room for operator action.

More About 3rd Party Screening

AlphaCard Visitor Pass allows for direct connection to three 3rd party criminal databases. These are:

Amber Road
DataDrivers
Descartes

Each of these services specialize in slightly different forms of restricted party lists.

Amber Road’s Restricted Party Screening solution offers over 300 restricted party lists from governments worldwide. This solution offers a variety of criminal registry lists for securely screening your potential visitors
DataDriver Technologies’instant sex offender search offers current and complete criminal data so you can accurately screen your potential visitors. This solution includes sex offender registries from all 50 states and a large number of Native American reservations. It also carries several US territories including Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands
The Descartes MK Denied Party Screening™ solution offers several comprehensive lists for accurately screening your potential visitors. This solution is best suited for performing very detailed background checks against federal registry lists. The standard list package includes lists issues by authorities including the U.S. Department of Treasury, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Several premium list packages are available as well, which provide access to a larger set of registry lists, including international crime registries.

Please note that this are separate subscriptions from your AlphaCard Visitor Pass software.

After you have selected and logged into the account that meets your needs the best, you can also set when and how often you want to screen your potential visitors. This requires an internet connection, and depending on the speed of that connection, the process can take a few seconds per background check. AlphaCard Visitor Pass allows you to conduct a 3rd party visitor screening:

During check in
When adding a visitor to an event
Upon visitor record creation

You can set any or all of these. You can also control how long a screening will last. The default is 30 days.

We recommend following up a failed screening with a blacklisting of the visitor record to ensure that the visitor cannot check in, and it notifies your staff of the security risk.

More About Signable Documents

Signable Documents operate as a slightly different form of security than the other options. Signable documents can be setup so that each attendee of an event must sign a legal document before entering the facility.

This feature requires the use of events so that you can tailor the document to the event. If you have not done so yet, please read this guide: How to Create and Use Events in Secure. These documents can be setup by your legal team to alleviate any potential breaches of privileged information or potential safety risks.

As such, these documents are widely used as non-disclosure agreements, safety waivers or insurance waivers. Each of these documents will be presented to the visitor, who will have to sign the document to be able to check in. These signed documents are saved into an internal directory of AlphaCard Visitor Pass, and can only be opened by an administrator password. They are kept as non-editable .pdf files.

Alternatively, you can use AlphaCard Visitor Pass to print out these documents to a printer, which will allow check in of the visitor, if you want to keep a physical copy on file rather than a virtual one.

Signable documents are best used in conjunction with other ways to ensure identity as well, and instead of focusing solely on security upon check in, can be used to ensure security after check-in.

More About Operator Action

Quite simply, no matter how many automated systems that are put in place there exists the chance for a failure of this system. For a truly secure environment, we recommend requiring operator action upon every check in. This extra step can help ensure as much accuracy as possible when checking in a visitor.

Of course the downside for requiring an operator is that you will have to have someone at the check-in station at all times. Also, this will in most cases slow down the check in process since the operator will have to manually confirm the identity of the visitor and click the appropriate buttons, but the operator also increases the security more than any individual security protocol can.

More About the Email Call for Help button

If you anticipate having to deal with problematic visitors on a fairly consistent basis, AlphaCard Visitor Pass allows you to setup a quick email call for help. This email will send a pre-programmed email to recipient(s) of your choice. This can include information including the name of the person, and the location of the incident if you are using the rooms and lobby functionality.

This allows on-site security or a supervisor to respond to a possible threat quickly, with no overt sign that a message has been sent.

More About Unique & Expiring Barcodes

If biometric capturing is beyond what you feel comfortable doing with the system, it is also possible to generate unique barcodes for every visitor that expire after a set period of time. This easily allows control of the existing cards, since only the cards that have been printed recently will have the correct barcodes on them.

The downside of this option is since the barcodes must be generated one at a time creating them every week to month can be a fairly large hassle, depending on just how many records you have.

If you continue to experience problems, or have questions about your AlphaCard Visitor Pass software, please contact AlphaCard technical support.