Physical Access Control Systems (PACS)
A physical access control system provides organizations with a secure and efficient workplace, protects sensitive areas, and enhances overall security.
- Securely manage, monitor and control door ingress and egress.
- Tracking of who does what and when.
- Maintaining compliance requirements to lower insurance costs and prevent human errors.
- Asset protection to ensure only trusted personnel have access.
- Easily generate scheduled, automated transaction reports for employee time tracking and audit trails.
System Architecture
There are (3) predominant architectures, including client-server, web-based on the control panel and cloud managed. The most common and preferable is the client-server architecture. This includes management software and a central database hosted on a server which communicates directly with networked control panels. Client workstations communicate with the database server, which then downloads data to the control panels.
Smaller systems, typically no more than 4 doors, have the option of the serverless configuration which hosts the database on the control panel itself. In this model, users connect to a basic management interface via the web browser to directly make changes on the panel.
Finally, there is the cloud-based solution, wherein control panels or card readers report back to a managed cloud platform and users make changes over the internet.
Human Interface Devices
To control access in a building, a human is required to present his credential. Credential formats can vary, with the most common being a physical card. Other credentials include pin codes, fingerprint, hand geometry, finger vein, smartphone Bluetooth/NFC, facial and others. Highly secure areas can require MFA (multi-factor authentication).
Biometric credentials (e.g. fingerprint, facial, etc) utilize the structure of human tissue to encode / decode the credential. Non-biometric credentials, such as cards, may use different encoding formats. It’s important to know which format is required in a given use case. The format can include such things as the hashing algorithm, card sequence numbers and facility code.