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Integrated biometric access

The John Roan School is a secondary comprehensive in Greenwich, south-east London. Founded in 1677, it is one of the oldest state schools in the country. With a brand new, state-of-the art building at Westcombe Park, and a fully redeveloped facility at Maze Hill, John Roan required an improved and upgraded access control solution.

The John Roan School contracted Ideal Security to provide a solution that would enable the school security administrators to manage and control the movement of people across the school grounds. The students at the school had got into the habit of sharing access tokens and PIN numbers, in order to take advantage of restricted areas on the premises. John Roan required a solution that would prevent this practice.

Biometric solution

Russell Webb, of Ideal Security recommended integrating the school’s existing Net2 system with Suprema BioConnect’s identity management platform, to provide a simple end-to-end system for the school security administrators.

Net2 is a user-friendly, flexible networked access control system, designed to make the management of any site straightforward. The ease with which an additional identity management system can be integrated into the Net2 software, meant it provided the ideal framework to meet the school’s growing requirements.

The installation of 31 BioLite Net Readers was initially used to manage the movement of the 300 members of staff across the two school sites. With the completed BioConnect and Net2 software integration, the new system is nowfully operational, managing the flow of over 1600 students and the 300 staff across the school grounds.

The multi-factor authentication required by the BioLite Net readers; PIN, fingerprint, and token, enabled the users to continue using their existing PINs and tokens, with the additional level of security and peace of mind from the biometric authentication. The new system provides a unique record of who is on site, preventing any unauthorised persons from gaining access to restricted areas or from using a borrowed token. Utilising the existing means of identification, while integrating with the new readers has meant disruption to the staff and students was kept to a minimum.

Fast rollout

The simplicity of the Net2 software integration with the BioConnect platform means that John Roan has been able to roll the new system out to more users than anticipated, in a short period of time.

Russell said, “The John Roan School admin loved Net2 for its simplicity and flexibility both for reporting and integration options”. The Net2 and BioConnect platform integration has capitalised on the simplicity that Net2 is known for, to deliver a much improved solution and, most importantly for the John Roan School, a simple administration tool.

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