Access control is a major issue for businesses large and small. Companies with high-tech access control systems: access cards, fingerprint or retina scanners, etc. – You can easily reprogram access codes and remove old employees from the database. But even the smallest businesses that depend on the security provided by a good traditional lock and key system need to update their access controls regularly. This is a problem whether you use padlocks, cylinder locks, or police locks.
The first step is to conduct a periodic key audit to review the status and location of each key, ensuring that no unauthorized person has one. In small businesses with few employees, this can be a fairly simple process and sufficient to ensure access control.
However, if your company has more than a few employees, an audit may not be enough. A former employee, especially a resentful fired one, might still have a key, inadvertently or deliberately. You could have “lost” it or made a duplicate before returning it.
Some companies protect themselves against unauthorized duplication by having each key stamped “Do Not Duplicate”; Accredited locksmiths will refuse to make an unauthorized copy. Unfortunately, there are key cutters that will ignore that stamp, and others (especially in large, high-volume stores) don’t have the time to (or just don’t) pay attention to such restrictions.
Some keys are more difficult to copy than others. Medeco keys are impossible to duplicate except by authorized Medeco dealers, and only with the permission of the registered owner. That protection eliminates the possibility of someone copying a key before returning it on demand. But even Medeco locks are vulnerable to the former employee who “lost” his key and is therefore unable to hand it over.
The safest way to ensure that only authorized people have keys is to repaint the locks from time to time, so that old keys no longer work. After all, it’s not just disgruntled people who hold onto keys. At one point, she had the keys to three small businesses that she had once worked for and where she was still friends with the owners. Keeping the keys was not for dishonest reasons, but rather dishonorable: it was convenient when I was in the neighborhood to be able to enter, even if they were locked, to go to the bathroom or make a quick call (this was before cell phones). One of those keys still worked five years after I left!
If you haven’t performed a key audit recently, please do so. And if there is a chance that a former employee (or perhaps a disgruntled former employee of a current employee) or even someone like me has an unauthorized key, you should call to have your locks changed. The cost of repainting and replacing some keys, or even a large number of them, is far less than the loss you could face as a result of unauthorized access.
All of the above is also valid for residences. Think of all the people who have had the keys to your apartment over the years: the superintendent (or a number of them), a housekeeper or cleaning service, the caterers, the landlord, a neighbor who moved in, dog walkers, sloppy teenagers slowing down. your key to your best friend. . . .
It’s probably time to make a change, before you wish you had.