A leading international authority on secured entry solutions, Greg Schreiber, discusses global trends that will increasingly affect Australasian and Asia-Pacific businesses including data centres and businesses holding major volumes of private and public information. Greg is a Vice-President of Sales with 24 years’ experience in key specifier positions of Boon Edam USA, which has completed 50,000 installations of its security entrance and revolving door technologies. He says breaches of public and private records can destroy reputations and trust overnight, be they be leaks of public records, health records, tax and financial matters, supply chain and telecommunications data, building and design professionals, and the data and IT specialists they work with.
With vast amounts of sensitive information at stake, preventing unauthorised access is a top priority. Compliance with industry regulations, maintaining security, and managing costs are critical challenges for data centre managers.
Secured entry solutions, such as security revolving doors and interlocking security portals, address these concerns by preventing security threats like tailgating and piggybacking. These advanced systems integrate with biometric technology, ensuring that only authorised personnel can enter a data centre facility, providing compliance and cost-effective security.
Addressing the Unique Challenges of Data Centres
Managing a data centre involves meeting several key objectives:
- Protecting sensitive data stored within the facility
- Ensuring compliance with industry and government regulations
- Controlling rising costs, including energy, labour, and property expenses
Balancing these goals can be challenging, but physical access control solutions offer a cost-effective approach. Secured entry systems not only protect data centres from unauthorised access, but also deliver a solid return on investment (ROI) through automation, long-term cost savings, and improved efficiency.
Layered Security: Preventing Unauthorised Access to Critical Areas
Securing data centres ensures that only authorised personnel can access the most sensitive areas, particularly server rooms. Security revolving doors and interlocking mantrap portals offer a robust physical barrier.
These systems enforce single-entry access through advanced sensor systems like StereoVision, which scan the compartment to confirm that the user is alone. Once inside the portal, biometric identification further verifies the user's identity.
These rigorous security measures effectively prevent unauthorised entry, significantly reducing the risk of security breaches. While these systems typically allow only five people to pass through per minute, they are ideal for data centres, where only a limited number of employees need access to critical areas.
Ensuring Compliance with Regulatory Standards
Secured entry solutions do more than prevent unauthorised access; they also help data centres meet regulatory compliance requirements. Whether (in the US) it's the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Safeguards Rule, FISMA, ISO 27001, HITRUST, PCI DSS, SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, or ITAR, data centres must demonstrate effective physical security measures. Such compliance requirements are expanding globally, and will increasingly affect the security needs of the world’s top 20 economies, which include Australia and the Asia-Pacific regions.
Automated secured entry systems support compliance by providing immutable, 90-day archived records and alarm retrieval data, which can be used for customer, shareholder, and audit purposes.
Automating compliance with physical security protocols also reduces training and operating expenses, protects sensitive data, and ensures continuous operations – all while meeting stringent regulatory requirements.
Energy Efficiency: Securing Your Facility While Reducing Costs
Beyond security and compliance, energy efficiency is an increasing priority for data centres. Rising energy and water costs make it essential to design security systems that minimise energy loss. Traditional swinging and sliding doors allow significant air leakage, reducing the efficiency of HVAC systems. Security revolving doors and mantrap portals offer an energy-efficient solution by keeping entrances closed, preventing air loss and contamination.
Alarm Management: Reducing False Alarms and Operational Costs
False alarms can be a costly, time-consuming issue for data centres. Full-height turnstiles, security revolving doors, and high security portals help reduce security violations and eliminate alarms triggered by human error.
By automating the enforcement of security protocols, these systems free security employees from responding to false alarms, allowing them to focus on higher-value prevention tasks. This approach improves operational efficiency and reduces labour costs.
Secured Entrances: A Cost-Savings and Security Imperative for Data Centres
Implementing secured entry solutions is a wise investment for security and a cost-saving measure. By automating security processes, reducing energy consumption, and minimising false alarms, data centres can operate more efficiently while maintaining the highest levels of protection.
Boon Edam's secured entry solutions – available globally through company branches and full subsidiaries such as Boon Edam Australia – can eliminate Door Forced Open (DFO) and Door Held Open (DHO) alarms, reducing energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional doors. These solutions offer a proven ROI for data centres, combining security, compliance, and cost control into one solution.
Investing in advanced security solutions helps data centres attract new customers and ensure long-term success, by demonstrating security awareness at all levels when handling and storing their valuable IP.
A multi-layered security strategy – that includes automated alarm resolution, biometric verification, and energy-efficient design – empowers data centres to protect sensitive information, meet regulatory standards, and optimise costs, thus ensuring a secure, sustainable future.
About the Author
Greg Schreiber has been with Boon Edam a total of 24 years, and currently is the Senior Vice President of Sales. Greg’s career spans over 29 years in the security entrance and door industry in a variety of sales management roles, including National Sales Manager and VP of Sales, After the acquisition of Tomsed Corporation, a supplier of turnkey security solutions, Greg has successfully steered the North American and Latin American sales teams to produce double-digit sales growth in each of the last four years. A native of Pittsburgh, Greg graduated from the University of Toledo with a degree in Business Administration.
About us:
About Boon Edam Australia
Boon Edam Australia, which provides a full suite of entrance security solutions in Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea. It is the local full branch operation of Royal Boon Edam, which is a market leader in 27 countries, providing, under the one roof, revolving doors, security doors & portals, speed gates, access gates and full height turnstiles to ensure the security of your entry and perimeter. Boon Edam Australia operates under Master security licence number: 000104487. You can find more news about Boon Edam on www.boonedam.com.au/news
About Royal Boon Edam
With work environments becoming increasingly global and dynamic, smart, safe entry has become the centre of activity in and around many buildings. Royal Boon Edam is a global market leader in reliable entry solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, with 150 years of experience in engineering quality, we have gained extensive expertise in managing the transit of people through office buildings, airports, healthcare facilities, hotels, and many other types of buildings. We are focussed on providing an optimal, sustainable experience for our clients and their clients. By working together with you, our client, we help determine the exact requirements for the entry point in and around your building.
Contact details:
Jack Mallen-Cooper
PR Consultant
Whyte Public Relations
(02) 9901 4306
whytepr@whytepr.com.au
