If you manage a building, you already know the feeling: a keycard goes missing, a tailgater follows someone through a secure door, a visitor signs in on a paper logbook that nobody checks, or a security guard stares at a wall of monitors without seeing anything useful. Traditional building security systems were designed for a simpler time.
Smart building security changes the equation. By using artificial intelligence and camera-based analytics, modern building security systems can recognize faces instead of cards, detect threats as they happen instead of after the fact, and give facility managers a clear, real-time picture of who is in their building and what is going on.
The Problem with Traditional Building Security Systems
Before looking at what AI can do, it helps to understand where conventional building security falls short.
Keycards Are Not Identities
A keycard does not verify who is holding it. If an employee loses their badge, anyone who picks it up can use it. Keycard systems answer the question "does this card have access?" but not the more important question: "is this the right person?"