Has office building security gotten tighter in the last quarter-century?

Factual Questions
1

My experience of office buildings from the Toronto area from the 1990s to early 2000s was mostly that they were open-access. Basically, you went in, went to the elevator, and when you got to the business that was your destination, it was up to the tenant whether you could just turn the doorknob, open the door, and go in, or whether you needed to ring the doorbell to be let in. In my experience, while there was typically a reception or security guard’s desk on the ground floor, you never had to go to them to check in or state your business, they were only there if you needed to ask for directions.

An exception was my parents’ workplace, the IBM Canada programming laboratory at Eglinton and Don Mills. There you did have to check with security and be given a visitor’s badge before you went in. However, that wasn’t a classic office building with multiple units. It was a place where a lot of confidential information – new software projects, probably even government contracts – was being generated, so it’s no surprise that it was a secure facility.

When I came to the Czech Republic in 2003 and went to different offices for in-company ESL lessons, I found that it was quite a different story. As a rule in this country, when you go into an office building, you can’t just waltz in and move around at will. You have to go up to the reception desk, say where you’re going, and give your name (if not show ID), and they will either open a gate or turnstile for you to go in, or they will give you a card to do it yourself. In more recently built office buildings, which in Prague are often built more lengthwise than heightwise, you may even be given a card that gives you access only to a certain wing of the building.

I have found this to be a horrible nuisance. If there’s a lineup, I am being held up. If the receptionist is on a smoke break, I have to wait for them and may be late. If the card I’m given malfunctions, I have to go back. My first impression was that this country was paranoid about letting people into buildings. After all, Czech homeowners are required by insurance companies to have front doors that can’t be opened without a key and in general, houses around here have a fence with a gate in front. Once, about twelve years ago, I was in the building of a head office of one of the smaller Czech banks, and was waiting in a lineup at the reception to show my ID and be let into the building to go to my lesson with some bank employees. I grumbled about this requirement to the young receptionist, who grumbled back “well, we’re in a bank after all.” I really didn’t get the connection – it’s not like I was asking to be allowed to walk into the bank vault, only into some ordinary offices. I put this security requirement down to a particular Czech thing.

But then I started noticing in more and more Hollywood films that people walking into modern office buildings in New York City or wherever seemed to be using ID to get into the building. So I’m wondering, is this heightened security requirement for coming and going a trend for newer buildings in North America, too? If so, what could have prompted it? The 2001 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center? Advances in security technology with things like turnstiles and magnetic cards? Or something else?

I note that among the last times I remember being in a Toronto office building, in or around 2018, there was still no such security requirement. In 2018, shortly after getting Czech citizenship, I went to Two Bloor Street (formerly the CIBC building, across the street from the former Hudson’s Bay Centre – these are two buildings on the north side of Bloor Street at Yonge, they look like smaller versions of the old World Trade Center twin towers). My errand was to get a Czech passport from the Toronto consulate. The building as such was still free access. The suite of the Czech consulate required ringing the buzzer, which given the nature of the tenant was not surprising. However, these are buildings built in the first half of the 1970s. On the same note, around that year, I once went to the offices of a translation agency that was located in a small office building (maybe the M.O.N.Y. Life building???) across the street from the aforementioned former IBM complex; I similarly just went up to the elevator, and then I turned the doorknob and entered the offices. But again, this is an older building.

Were I to go back to Toronto or another North American metropolis today and go into one of the newer office buildings, would the level of security be as high as what I have been experiencing in the Czech Republic almost since I came here?

2

My anecdotal experience is similar. I worked in schools, secondary, colleges, and universities. I worked in office buildings.

In the 90’s there were no controls on doors of the schools I worked at. Anyone could walk right in. Even access to the research labs were open with doors unlocked or wide open. Not so anymore. This changed after about 2004 or so.

I worked at scientific instruments companies in the 2000s and these were more secure. key card swiping required. One, used to have a guard shack at the entrance but didn’t when I worked there.

3

Our office building has fobs, and previously had keycodes. The greatest liability has always been people holding the doors open for strangers.

4

I started working for a tech company in 1981, and we had to badge to get in. It was a more primitive setup, with camera stations at the doors where you put your badge (no photos) and they were viewed by a real person at the security desk. It was a big deal when we put photos on badges.

I remember one April Fools Day prank that involved us being issued hats with bar codes on them to be monitored by cameras as we move around the building.

5

I worked for a multinational, and one time was talking to a fellow from the New York City office. This was early to mid 90’s, he mentioned that there had been a case in the building where a “Typewriter repair technician” came in in aoveralls with a wheeler, took several IBM Selectrics saying he was told to pick them up for repairs.

In another case, telecommunications stopped working. The eventually tracking to another floor, where someone had opened the wiring riser closet and chopped off a several-hundred cable telephone trunk at the floor and ceiling, presumably for copper salvage.

Obviously by that point security was becoming a concern. Movies in the last decade or two seem to feature security and turnstiles - and some guy rushing or hopping the turnstiles is a key scene. Higher security including metal detectors (think Matrix lobby shootout) are common in places like federal buildings and courthouses, especially after 9-11.

My experience with the Toronto office was, they had a receptionist. You had to announce your business, she would call your contact, who would come and escort you to wherever. Of course, video surveillance has greatly enhanced security, but not necessarily simplified entry processes.

6

There have been many incidents of violence in office buildings which have caused firms to tighten security. Remember this one?

The perp wanted to target the NFL, but apparently the elevator he took didn’t go directly there.

7

In my experience of Toronto bank office buildings, there generally isn’t any security blocking access to the elevator banks on the ground floor. Taking the elevator to a specific floor usually doesn’t require any special access during office hours, but outside of office hours (early/late/weekends) you would need to tap your access card to get the elevator to operate. Once you get to your particular floor, there usually isn’t any reception desk; instead you would need to tap your access card to leave the elevator bank area. If you’re a visitor, you would generally call the person you’re visiting and they would let you in; in ye olde days, there would be a phone by the elevators for that purpose, but nowadays you would be expected to have a mobile phone. Our employers are regularly stressing the importance of not letting anyone follow you into the offices. Not much has changed in the past 25 years (in my experience) other than the absence of a receptionist’s desk.

I haven’t worked in any place in Toronto that requires guests to register or wear a guest ID badge, but years ago (pre-2000) I worked at a software company that operated that way.

8

My working life experience over that period - an office block usually always had a concierge / receptionist, and filtered visitors. They now all take all delivery of courier packages rather than let them go upstairs to the recipient. They’re usually equipped with CCTV monitors so have an idea of what’s happening beyond the lobby. Visitors are logged and sometimes have to wear a badge or lanyard and have to be met by their person and escorted.

Internal building access is by some sort of coded swipe card, which controls access to specific floors. No more floor hopping. Fire escapes are visually monitored.

As workers you now get instructions about building security, which I never had in the olden days. It covers guests, strangers, unclaimed bags or parcels, fire and how to manage receiving a bomb threat.

All that has escalated and been refined in the past quarter century. At the same time there has been a lot less to steal as we hot desk, go online and carry laptops. Building security is now dwarfed by the entirely new infrastructure of financial and data security that covers employees in the building and wherever their data is stored.

9

I’ve worked in three different office buildings in downtown Chicago in the last 7 years, as well as regularly visiting the office building of my main client (in Birmingham, Alabama), and the office of another client in downtown Chicago.

All four Chicago office buildings I experienced were skyscrapers, and all of them had multiple different tenants on different floors. In three of the four, one could not get to the elevators without either (a) an electronic badge that granted passage through a turnstile (and granted you access to the particular floor once you reached the elevator), or (b) a pass from the security guards in the lobby, who would have called someone to check that you were expected and permitted to enter.

The fourth was an older, historic building (two floors of which were a museum), and one could get into the building, and into the elevator, without a pass/badge. Once you got to the floor where my agency was located, then you needed a badge to get through a locked door, or permission to proceed from the receptionist.

The client building in Birmingham was entirely dedicated to that client, and security was very tight. You could not get past the front lobby without an electronic badge, or a literal escort (i.e., an employee who did have a badge). If you did not work there, the level of “visitor badge” you were given meant that you were not allowed anywhere in the building without an escort – even to go to the restroom.

All of these things were simply not a thing when I started working in the late '80s. Yes, we had ID badges, but they didn’t even have chips in them – you just waved them at the security guards at the front desk as you came in. Everything changed in the months and years after 9/11.

10

Absolutely. The agencies where I’ve worked in recent years had a series of mandatory annual training videos on various topics, and one was specifically on security: things like not letting people follow you through a secure door, locking down your computer when you leave your desk, etc.

11

Several folks have already made this point by example, but I’ll explicitly point out that there’s a fundamental difference between a building with one tenant and a building with many tenants.

For one-tenant buildings, the security perimeter pretty much must begin at the outermost lobby. For multi-tenant buildings it can start there, or it can start at the entrance to each tenant’s space.

The OP wasn’t real clear on which sorts of buildings they were dealing with when. But it seemed to me there was some element of apples to oranges comparison going on across time.

IME building security has been slowly tightening everywhere. Back in the days of mechanical door locks & mechanical keys, it was possible, though difficult, to issue people keys that only worked for their designated parts of a building. With the advent of cheap computerization, electronic locks of some kind and matching ID badges / fobs make that compartmentalization very inexpensive and very convenient for building management. So they increasingly put that capability to work.

12

Most were multiple-tenant (I specifically listed the IBM compound as an exeption), but a minority, such as the small bank, were large single-tenant office blocks. In the Czech Republic, both have the heightened security I described.

The buildings in the movies where an intruder jumps over a turnstile or whatever seem to be big multi-tenant buildings in places like NYC.

13

That might have been an April Fools’ Day joke then but today you certainly could track staff throughout the building if you wanted.

And another thing; if you’re using badge readers to control access to rooms, you could also link that data to the security cameras. So if the badge belonging to XYZ employee was used to access a particular room, you could see on camera the person who used that badge.

And today most security cameras are networked, connecting via ethernet, rather than connecting via coax video cable. The badge readers too can also be hardwired via ethernet cable.

14

When I used to travel for biz (until 2020), I saw the full spectrum. Some places just took your word for it; some wanted ID, which varied from just a business card (!) to something .gov. I have NEXUS so I’d usually present that, just to see if they knew what it was; some did, some didn’t, would want driver’s license instead.

Way back in the mid-90s I was visiting Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in Manhattan frequently. They had armed guards at the entrance, checkin with ID, more guards at the elevators verifying that you had a pass, badged doors on each floor after exiting the elevator. And my contact there would lock his laptop in his desk when he left it, because otherwise it would vanish. So at least they knew they needed security, although obviously it wasn’t managing to be effective!

Doing some work at a large automobile manufacturer in Dearborn, MI, I had to register my laptop with the guard on entry and verify it on exit. Unless I left after 5PM, in which case the guard had gone home. That still makes me SMH.

Potemkin security abounds.

15

Today, people are entering office buildings and stealing notebook computers instead.

16

Many buildings in the downtown core are moving to barriers and pre-registration of guests either for new builds or renovations. The Microsoft office in CIBC Square that I visit with some regularity sends you a QR code that lets you through the barrier and calls an elevator that automatically stops at their reception floor. In contrast, my wife works for a big blue bank on King St. that just needs a card to access her floor once she takes the elevator up.

17

We are not that far from the day when they can dispense w ID cards & fobs & keys altogether. The cameras everywhere will know who is everyone. You’ll be let through a door or not based on your face. Any intruder anywhere will be detected pretty quickly.

Meaning all those laptop thefts will have to be be done by insiders otherwise authorized to be in that room at that time.

18

The three Chicago buildings I mentioned earlier all had turnstiles which one could leap over, but that’d be about as far as you could get, as not only did one have to badge in while in the elevator to access a floor, but you’d have to use your badge again once you got to the elevator lobby at an upper floor, in order to actually get into the offices.

19

That’s more a trope than a reflection of reality. It gives the hero a chance to display his deception skills getting past security or the front desk. The bad guys are big institutions that occupy entire buildings.

20

I think this might have been in the 90s as well, but two guys walked into our data center saying they were Xerox repairmen and took out one of the super duper copy machines never to be seen again. Not long after that there was a scare when they thought some guys brought a rifle into the building. It turned out they were two IBM guys there to give a presentation, and the “rifle case” was their portable screen.

Working for that company until I retired, we went from completely open buildings (other than the back room at the data center) to wearing badges to having scannable badges to open doors. Also, with security staff at all points of egress.

Visitors had to get a V badge, and often also had to have an escort.