A shared door code has one problem that only shows up after something goes wrong: nobody can tell who actually used it. Once a PIN has been given to five people over two years, it has usually been given to fifteen, and changing it means telling everyone the new one - which is exactly the moment someone forgets to remove an ex-employee from the list.
Card and fob access solves that by assigning each person their own credential. HID and Rosslare readers cover most of what we install - a lost card gets deactivated and a new one issued, without touching anyone else's access or rekeying a single lock. It is the right default for most commercial sites: fast to issue, cheap to replace, and it produces an audit trail of who opened what, when.
Biometric readers go a step further for doors where "who has the card" is not a good enough answer - a card can be lent or lost, a fingerprint cannot. Suprema and Idemia terminals suit server rooms, cash offices and anywhere the door needs to be tied to the specific person rather than whatever they are carrying. They cost more per door and read slightly slower than a card tap, which is why most sites reserve them for a handful of doors rather than the whole building.
None of this matters without the right hardware actually holding the door. Electromagnetic locks from LOX Locking hold with continuous power and release instantly if power is cut - the correct behaviour for a fire exit, since a magnetic lock is fail-safe by design. Mechanical hardware from Lockwood stays as the key override on the same door even after it goes electronic, and electric strikes suit doors that need to stay lockable by key without power at all. Getting fail-safe and fail-secure backwards on the wrong door is a genuine life-safety issue, not just an inconvenience - it is worth confirming with whoever manages your fire compliance before hardware is ordered, not after it is installed.
Tell us your door count and what each door currently uses and we will put together a configuration - most sites end up mixing card readers on general doors with a biometric terminal on the one or two that actually need it.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
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