I work for a large Chicago hospital/medical center. So we do have armed security around the complex, but levels vary wildly. Some areas require keys and/or keycodes to enter, some don’t have physical barriers but will get you asked what you’re doing there even if you’re an employee. And some, well, we’re still serving the public so some areas have to be unlocked and public-accessible.
Not long ago, a woman in my department called Security because she thought she recognized a guy who’d been loitering in our area right around when her wallet was stolen from her desk (she’d stepped away “just for a moment”). That day, he caught her attention because he’d asked where he could go to get (something) done and he was later lurking around the wrong end of the floor from that office. Security found him hiding in an unlocked janitor’s closet, and they didn’t even do anything about that kind of trespassing, just kicked him out. :mad:
My last project was in the main IT and design building for a large utilities company. That building only hosted ourselves, in two floors. It was in an industrial park. There was a guard outside the building, in a house with car barriers; if the guards didn’t recognize you they asked where were you going, but soon you were waved through. There was no other security personnel. The doors to the two office areas had electronic padlocks; the one downstairs used to be locked, the one upstairs wasn’t even locked during office hours.
In a course I taught recently, my client hired 5 floors in a 15-floor building which belongs to a security company. The security company was both building safety and the client’s safety but it was different teams. It was one of those places where someone is supposed to go with you even for a trip to the bathroom or the water cooler; of course :rolleyes: the bathrooms were all in the “lifts area,” i.e., outside client’s security, so the person taking me to the bathroom would have to explain who I was and the guard would check my name and ID # against The List after lunch, trips to the bathroom, trips to the soda machine, trips to the snacks machine…
At my old job they pit in security–badges, RFID tags to get in the building, a guard at night–after laptops and parts went missing. This was around ten, twelve years ago. So sometimes it’s not corporate espionage.
We have a picture ID and a scanner thing attached to it. You have to swipe the card to get into the building (front or back), but there’s a security guard at all times at the front. The facilities manager is a stickler for showing your picture clearly to the guard (sometimes she sits at the desk with him), even if you just scanned your damn badge to unlock the door so obviously you have it. And yes, she knows every single employee. :rolleyes:
And in my department (IT), we have RSA tokens for every time we log into our computers. Note that of course, it doesn’t replace a single one of the 2935202935 passwords we have to use. Ugh.
a few years ago I had a lunch meeting at Google HQ’s famous cafeterias. All the free excellent food you can eat. My host explained as we walked across the courtyard to the building with the cafeteria that the guards at the checking badges door were very new - it had recently come to google’s attention that a group of people at Yahoo HG down the road a bit was bragging on an internal blog about how often they were eating lunch on google (and who knows what else they were up to).
That said, most office buildings in Silicon Valley where the company occupies only one building or part of it use badges or something similar without guards. Visitors need to be escorted in.
Geez, at big bad M$ you just swipe your card and waltz in. They try to remind people not to let in tailgaters. If you forget your card you just show your drivers license to the receptionist and they let you in. No problemo. Some labs are secure, but only the people who need to be there should be there anyway.
I think its a kind of perverse status symbol, all the big guys have “security”, because they might be targeted by terrists and stuff, so AAA Tool and Die has to have it too. Badges? Badges? We don’t need no steeeeeenking baddges!
We’ve got pretty good security where I work–dudes with machine guns, dogs, etc. But then again, I will be working with ordnance, and you’d kind of expect that on an Air Force base.
Even though they may know you personally, I never did mind someone familiar asking for a badge. I always took it as an opportunity to make sure I still had my ID card, which if lost, presents a whole 'nuther world of headaches.
Tripler
“Sir, can I see your badge? Good. Thanks!”
I believe the badge check serves a separate function from the badge scan. The idea for the badge check is to verify the photo matches the person carrying the badge. This is to prevent someone stealing a badge, using the electronic feature, and waltzing in as if they belong there. Secondary verification.
Ok, so my question is, how much can security at these places do? I’ve heard stories of the litigation issues for retail security - it’s cheaper to provide the illusion of security and let people get away than it is to deal with the lawsuits from false positives.
Where I work (a college) we recently had someone come in and rifle through a student’s bag, and the security guard (or ‘campus host’ as the official title goes) didn’t really do anything, just kicked him out. They then swapped security guards on us, but apparently wouldn’t say whether he’d been fired or what - my suspicion is that they simply moved him to another building to quiet the students’ complaints (seeing as they’ve done that for lab techs too).
So, all these white-collar security guards - how much can they do? What’s the general policy?
I’m not Maeglin, but we use fingerprint scanners where I work. For some reason, my right finger would not scan properly, so I use my left index finger.
At a previous company we had a couple break-ins and lost quite a few laptops and other IT equipment. They changed the contract with our security contractor to include having someone on site all night. The night guard was arrested for stealing snacks & soft drinks from the kitchen.
At my current company the receptionists know everybody and there is no check when entering the building. To get anywhere interesting you need a RFID badge.
I wave at my security guards twice a day. We get on well, and occasionally have drinks (although they don’t seem to get their rounds in much… or at all, actually).
I know the kind of folk you’re talking about though. I generally tend to just ignore them and do what I want.
I work in the local office of a global company–only five of us here, but our office is in the tallest building in the state.
We have two badges: one for our company and one for the building. The company one gets us through our own locked doors in our suite (and can be used at other company offices if we’re granted temporary or permanent access there). The building badge only need to be used if we’re here off-hours, in which case we need to scan it once to get through the security door into the building and then again in the elevator so that it will unlock the floor our office is on.
I work in a call center where we handle sensitive data such as clients’ credit card numbers, so security is a big thing here and is needed. We don’t want some schmuck to just waltz in off the street and stroll into the building, not that this is likely. If anything, a former employee might try to sneak in and obtain unauthorized credit card information.
They’re going to upgrade the badge system this weekend. Right now waving your badge in front of the sensor just opens the door for you. The new system will also log the identity and the times each employee passes through the door. Even if the door is already open they want you to scan your badge before entering so that your entry will be logged.