About the business
I manage a small testing lab. One room holds client samples and sealed records.
The problem
After reading how easily some cards can be cloned, it hit me that a card is only one thing: something you have. Anyone who finds it, borrows it or copies it can walk straight in.
Putting a fingerprint reader on every door seemed like overkill for a building where most rooms hold printer paper and coffee mugs. It would have cost a small fortune, too.
So, one door.
What we did
We picked the single door that mattered most. At that door, entry now takes a card and a PIN. A copied or borrowed card on its own doesn't open it.
For the rest of the building, a good encrypted card is plenty.
A few rules came with it:
- Every PIN is personal. No shared codes.
- Three wrong PINs in a row raise an alert.
We considered a biometric second step. A PIN won, because it needs no consent forms.
The result
The highest-risk door now needs two things. Nobody else noticed a thing, because daily life on every other door carried on exactly as it had before.
I didn't buy extra equipment for the whole lab. I put the extra step only where the risk actually was.
The first step is choosing cards that are hard to copy. Here's how one office found out which of theirs weren't.
Got one room where a card alone isn't enough? Tell us what's behind the door. We'll tell you whether a PIN, a biometric or neither is the right second step.
Free door-by-door access review
Send us your door list, or just tell us what's behind each door. We'll reply with the weak spots and what to fix first, cheapest first.
- Free
- Reply within 24 hours
- No obligation