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Tracking personnel flow in a large facility can be difficult. It’s made easier by using smart cards. These are cards that carry a microprocessor. This microprocessor can interact with access control card readers and provide information to an automated system that’s built to record and log personnel movement. In the event of a theft or accident, you can use this log of tracked movement to help you figure out what happened and who’s responsible.

What are Smart Cards?

First thing’s first: a card with a microprocessor sounds complex. Yet smart cards aren’t difficult to replace. The microprocessor isn’t a full computer or anything like that – it’s simply enough to carry a range of information that can be read by the more complex system that’s housed and managed by your security department. Such a system is straightforward to install and keep secure, and you can keep it so that it’s only accessed on an internal network – or even only via specific security workstations.

Now, smart cards also carry another benefit: each one is unique. This means if one is lost or stolen, it can be wiped from the system itself. Alternately, you can set the system to alert security if the lost or stolen card is used. The employee who it once belonged to is issued another new, unique card that is entirely different from the lost or stolen one.

Smart Card Advantages

Smart cards offer more benefit from a simpler electronic key card reader. By making each card unique and holding information on the card itself, security can create and keep logs of personnel movement. You can break this down into specific reports whenever you need: for sections of your facility or to track the activities of specific personnel.

All of this combines into a much more secure access control system than an electronic key card reader with non-unique cards can provide. Those can’t track personnel, let alone create logs or reports of personnel movements. Since every card is the same, you can’t wipe a lost or stolen card without replacing every personnel member’s card.

Smart card access control systems can use electronically read cards or proximity fobs. Each one being unique allows you that much more security over your facility.