New College secures student rooms with SALTO
21 August, 2008
category: Contactless, Corporate, Education
New College in Oxford is upgrading its building access control system, replacing the mag stripe card students use with a Mifare contactless card and installing a virtual locking network from security provider SALTO Systems.
The existing security installation at New College did “not provide the amount of security information the college now requires to manage the access control of students and staff,” says Darren Bryan of SALTO’s business partner Smiths Security.
“New College decided to address this situation as part of a rolling upgrade of its security facilities and enhance the system with a modern state-of-the-art Mifare contactless access system. This would need to be fully capable of integrating with and working alongside the existing system until it was eventually replaced, while providing full audit trail information and control of student movement,” he adds.
Smiths designed a secure access control system, installing four wall readers utilizing the SALTO Virtual Network and 25 electronic handle sets. The online wall readers are fitted to the main doors, controlling perimeter access, while the offline handle sets control access to the individual student rooms. Operating together, the system has been configured to provide built in growth capability for the College’s future security and access control requirements, says Bryan.
The handle sets read, receive and write information via the Mifare cards as students enter and leave the building and since most access related information is kept encrypted on these cards, the perimeter door mounted wall readers are able to update and receive information from the cards at any time. This provides 90% of the benefits of a fully online access control system at the cost of a stand alone system, adds Bryan.
As the students use their smart ID cards, they build up an on-card audit trail enabling college management to track movement through both the offline and online parts of the system. If a card is lost or stolen it can be quickly deleted from the system.
One of the largest colleges in Oxford, New College was founded in 1379 and currently has some 400 undergraduates and nearly 200 post-graduates.