Brian Davidson, Regional Sales Manager at Traka Americas describes how a Florida university adopted campus-wide key management to serve an increasing number of departments and enhance campus security.

Campus security

Colleges and universities operate as complex ecosystems consisting of schools and departments that independently serve a purpose but simultaneously stay connected to a central source.

As such, campus security solutions must be both harmonious and autonomous, while having the ability to scale to accommodate growth and change.

Consider the following case study of a major university in Florida that has adopted campus-wide key management and evolved its usage to serve an increasing number of departments and ultimately set the tone for overall campus security operations.

Parallel growth

Since the turn of the century, few universities have experienced rapid growth like the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando.

What was originally founded as a school to support the space program at the Kennedy Space Center less than an hour away, UCF has skyrocketed in development, particularly in the past three decades.

In 2003, it was named the fastest-growing university in the US.

The student population has soared to near, and sometimes eclipsing, 70,000, and, according to US News and World Report, the school is currently the second largest university in the country for undergraduate students, behind only Arizona State University.

During that continued growth was a pivotal moment in UCF’s development of campus security solutions.

In 2008, the school elected to invest in a key management system for its facilities department.

The move marked a change in how the department was issuing keys, as they were abandoning an outdated system of manually issuing them in favor of a modern, consolidated solution that would set the groundwork for system-wide adoption.

Integration and implementation didn’t happen overnight, however.

As with many higher education institutions, each college and department within the university’s system operated autonomously and many of them had key management procedures that had been standard practice.

Releasing that sense of ownership among the individual departments included having transparent discussions about workflow, how many keys were truly needed and which people should have access to them.

A unique example of that on the UCF campus is Trevor Colbourn Hall.

The nearly 140,000 square foot facility houses portions of more than 20 departments, including the College of Arts and Humanities, Student Success and Well-Being, and the Burnett Honors College.

When key management solutions were first installed in the building, there were three separate key cabinets.

As that system became outdated, administrators reevaluated operations and identified how many of the keys were actually being used.

They are now considering consolidating the three cabinets down to one, as it would be more cost-effective than maintaining three separate units.

A similar instance occurred at UCF Downtown, a campus located in the heart of Orlando’s downtown district.

The facility previously used two key cabinets but has since been consolidated to one.

What’s helped in that process towards increasing campus security has been the ability to assign different departments to a certain row of keys in a single cabinet (i.e., the music department has one row of keys, administration has another, etc.)

That allows those departments to still enforce their own access control but through a consolidated system that’s easier to maintain.

Matching hardware to software

As more and more UCF departments began to utilize key cabinets, an important standardization developed.

Although purchased with funding from the respective departments themselves (now at more than a dozen), the cabinets have now all come from the same vendor.

The benefits of doing so are multi-faceted, starting with software monitoring.

Older versions of the cabinets that UCF purchased required desktop programming, which meant administrators had to install “thick” clients on each desktop that needed to monitor access of key usage.

Given the size of a university like UCF, that can be an arduous task and can invite update issues with bugs and compatibility concerns.

However, the university is in the process of replacing every cabinet to an upgraded version that can communicate with the vendor’s corresponding, browser-based software.

Being able to send a simple URL to an administrator not only accelerates implementation, but also simplifies monitoring through a web application.

Administrators have faster access to audit trails of keys and can provide reports of usage to meet compliance and safety standards.

Along the lines of software adoption has been the critical integration between the key cabinets’ software with UCF’s campus security system.

Like many universities, all UCF students, faculty and staff have an online profile.

That profile is their digital fingerprint that grants them access to a wide array of platforms, including key cabinets for appropriate staff and faculty.

Management of those profiles is integrated from the university-level with the key cabinet servers at the respective departments which means assigning access to certain approved users is seamless and consolidated, rather than each department having to integrate users into their own servers.

Perhaps most importantly, if an emergency arises where a user must be decommissioned, it can be done instantly, which can eliminate unauthorized access to sensitive assets when cases arise that result in staff termination.

Additional uses and expansion

Beyond general access control, UCF utilizes key cabinets (and their corresponding software) for another vital application: fleet management.

The university has approximately 100 vehicles in their respective fleets, which are essential for a vast array of everyday tasks.

When a user returns a vehicle pool key to the cabinet, they’re required to input into the system how long they checked it out for and how far the car was driven.

It represents a clear system of accountability and reduces the possibility of someone checking out a vehicle for an unnecessary amount of time.

Also, users can identify if there’s an issue with the vehicle and how much fuel is left in it, which not only informs the next user that a particular car isn’t fully fueled or needs service, but also allows the administrator to remove that vehicle key from circulation, which helps ensure operational efficiency.

Currently, UCF has 74 cabinets throughout its system and the goal is to install 17 more before the end of 2024.

They’re hoping to eliminate all separate servers with the departments to bring key cabinet control under one centralized infrastructure.

Also, the school is hoping to integrate another element of physical access control to their system and key cabinets, which will further illustrate the far-reaching benefits to adopting a key management solution that can integrate with a campus security and access control system.

It’s true not every college or university operates at the size and breadth that UCF does.

However the core elements of how it has strategically adopted critical key management to accommodate its campus security operations and growth can, and should, be mirrored by any institution that prioritizes safety and campus security.

Amidst an ever-changing campus security solutions landscape, key management represents a future-proof solution that addresses a security concern at its most fundamental level.

About the author

Brian Davidson is a Regional Sales Manager for Traka Americas, which is a global leader in intelligent management solutions for keys and equipment and part of ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions.

Brian is based in Central Florida.

This article was originally published in the April edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.