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Easing visitor management ­headaches

If ever there was a case of having one’s cake and eating it, effective visitor management must surely be it. On the one hand, one wants a system that controls access effectively and keeps intruders out, but, on the other hand, one does not want to make the process so convoluted that legitimate visitors who have every reason for being there have no hope of ever getting past the entrance to the premises.

No visitor wants to jump through so many hoops just to deliver a package (or whatever the case may be). But then again, with crime being what it is and with lives and assets to protect, who can afford to take chances?

It begs the question: is it possible to have complete security at the entrance to your complex or business park without making things unnecessarily difficult for your visitors?

According to leading access automation manufacturer Centurion Systems, the answer is an emphatic yes. While Centurion primarily focuses on domestic access control with earlier incarnations of products such as its G-SWITCH-22 GSM module, a recent hardware upgrade that saw this versatile device’s user memory being increased from 300 users to 1500, made it abundantly clear that high-volume access control was just as much a priority.

From a visitor management point of view, the G-SWITCH offers ironclad security without subjecting visitors to time-consuming and often intrusive verification procedures. The built-in Limited Uses feature, for example, enables system administrators to grant visitors a user-defined number of output activations and, once these activations have been used, the visitor’s access number is automatically deleted from the system’s memory.

The administrator would simply add the visitor’s number to the system, either via SMS or using Centurion’s G-WEB online user interface, set the number of uses allowed (two is typical as it allows for both entry to and exit from the property) and be secure in the knowledge that reliable visitor authentication has not only been implemented, but streamlined.

When it comes to complexes and estates with high-volume demands, Centurion’s SupaHelix multi-user access control device offers a range of features ranging from individually configurable channels to detailed transaction logging, and its LCD-based setup and capacious user memory.

The device really comes alive, however, when the optional plug-in GSM Module is added. Besides enabling a further 10 000 users to gain access to the property via their mobile phones, the GSM Module also allows for easy offsite administration of users and device settings (including configuring the afore­mentioned Limited Uses facility) as well as notification of input events via SMS and over-the-air system backup.

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