How many badges does one person carry?

Someone who works at 4 of your sites should carry 1 badge.

Ask them how many they actually carry. Usually it's 4.

How it happens

Each site chose its access control system at some point, for good reasons, from whichever supplier made sense then. None of those choices was wrong.

Each system keeps its own list of people and issues its own badges. That is simply what access control systems do. There is no shared identity underneath, and nothing a single badge could belong to.

The person carries the result in their pocket. Your security team carries it too, in ways that are harder to see.

What it costs

4 badges means 4 issuing processes, 4 stocks of blank cards and 4 desks to visit when one gets lost.

It also means 4 revocations. When someone leaves, their access has to be closed in 4 systems. The real risk is that 3 get closed and 1 is forgotten. That leaves a working badge nobody is looking for.

You also can't give a reliable headcount for the organisation. Adding up 4 site lists counts the same people more than once.

What has to be in place first

Issuing 1 card and hoping every system accepts it doesn't work. 3 things need to be in place underneath.

1 identity record per person, covering employees, contractors, visitors and suppliers. Without it, the badge has nothing to belong to.

An integration with each access control system, through that manufacturer's own published interface. This lets the same identity show up in every system.

A credential specification, agreed once: application, file, format and key number. If a badge means something different at each site, you really have 4 badges that happen to look alike.

What changes

The person carries 1 badge. It is the most visible change, and the least important one.

Revocation becomes 1 action. Card, phone and wallet pass close together, at every site, from the same record. Nobody has to remember the fourth system.

Issuing becomes 1 process. You can then automate it, or move it to a self-service terminal.

Your organisation also gets a headcount it can stand behind, because every person is counted once.

The access governance scorecard asks how many badges one of your people carries. It takes 5 minutes. Take the scorecard Talk to us