Smart Locks Control Access at Australian College

25 January 2010

Set in extensive grounds in West Essendon, Melbourne, St. Bernard's College is a single-gender Catholic Secondary School offering a wide range of quality education to approximately 1300 young male students from Year 7 through to Year 12. The college is administered as two separate campuses - Years 7 to 9 and Years 10 to 12 - who share the same site.

Jason Blakey, St Bernard’s College IT Manager, says “Safety and security is something we take very seriously so management of students, staff and visitors is crucial for the college. Our existing mechanical keyed system was proving ever more costly to maintain so we looked at replacing it by trialling an American security product.

This, however, did not perform to expectations as we needed a solution that could not only handle our present access control requirements, but also take care of additional functions such as integration with photocopiers and library systems as required. We needed a future proof access control system that had a proven track record in the education marketplace that could deliver 24/7 critical security protection,” said Blakey.

XS4 smart locks, wall readers and control units from SALTO Systems have now been installed, controlling access on 50 doors around the college in the main reception, office and administration areas, classrooms and IT centres. The external doors to the college are all controlled using the SALTO WRM 9001 wall readers which act as ‘Hotspot’ access points granting or denying access and updating ID key cards.

The SALTO XS4 Access Control solution particularly appealed to St Bernard’s College as the number of card holders and readers the system can manage is unlimited. “With low cost user ID cards, automatic opening and closing, easy online integration into the existing IT network and future RFID Mifare multi application benefits, this scalable solution was exactly what the college needed” comments Jason Knowles from JAB Solutions, the local authorised SALTO dealer carrying out the installation.

Scott Fraser, SALTO Area Development Manager, Australia, says "We are very excited to be awarded this exciting opportunity to secure St Bernard’s College. The XS4 system together with its SALTO Virtual Network (SVN) technology provides 90% of the functionality of a fully wired online system but at a fraction of the cost.

It uses distributed intelligence in the locks and cards to manage their access control requirements in a secure and comfortable way whilst simultaneously eliminating any potential problems with key control.

The ‘smart’ ID cards build up 'on-card' audit trails through normal use giving complete control over access and enabling them to track the movement of staff and visitors through both the off-line and on-line parts of the system if required. This enables a complete access profile of each individual to be established and updated as necessary at the ‘Hotspot’ wall readers.

It can also programme keys to allow access to specific rooms or areas within the college for selected periods only, with the doors auto locking at pre-specified times as required. And if key security is breached due to the loss of a key card, it can be instantly deleted from the system without the need or cost of rekeying or changing locks – saving the college time and money.”

Jason Blakey concludes “Controlling access is one of the most important security issues the college faces, and effectively securing multiple rooms and building access has been an extremely challenging task. However our fully integrated SALTO solution now gives us the ability to auto lock and unlock rooms, set user time zones and manage and update access rights at will with none of the costs or problems associated with our previous mechanical key arrangements”.