Secure Access for Critical Infrastructure Sites.
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Critical infrastructure security and compliance professionals are responsible to ensure that their entry processes properly authenticate staff and visitors - both at the initial point of enrolment and for subsequent visits. To achieve higher security, standard badging procedures need to be reassessed. A common practice at critical infrastructure sites is to issue badges or access privileges to staff or contractors based on a basic ID check. This ID check is typically undertaken directly by operations staff or by a contracting organisation. There are several security vulnerabilities inherent in this scenario:
If the initial ID check is simply a visual inspection of the staff or contractor’s photo ID, or a scan of the barcode on the ID, this fails to meet the threshold for full authentication of the document. Barcodes and photos on ID documents can be forged with relative ease, meaning that a facility with weak ID inspection procedures can unwittingly grant access to a person with a fraudulent ID.
Any additional biometric security enrolment the organisation then performs will be rendered pointless, as the person’s face, fingerprint, or retinal scan will be registered in the system with a fake identity.
Finally, critical infrastructure organisations will also benefit from the ability to check the names of individuals requesting badges against government and regulatory watch lists, as well as any internal watch lists that are mandated (such as banned contractors, disgruntled former staff, access privilege lists etc.). This helps ensure that criminals, wanted suspects, foreign agents, banned contractors and former employees are not unknowingly admitted into the system.
Combining these three measures - ID authentication, facial matching, and watch list checks facilitate the goal of ensuring that critical infrastructure sites do not grant access to individuals who don’t belong there. The technology powering these measures can be integrated with a property’s visitor management and badging systems, helping make the enrolment and authentication process extremely efficient even with this heightened level of security.
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