Security expert Abloy UK is advising companies to secure remote sites and minimise the risk of substantial fines using innovative new access control technology. This advice comes in light of Thames Water’s recent record fine of over £20m for polluting the River Thames with 1.4 billion litres of raw sewage.
Granting remote access
Thames Water was functioning with reduced operational resources, resulting in unmanned sites. When alarms were raised signaling issues, they were not attended to immediately – including one being ignored for 37 hours.
However, a system such as PROTEC2 CLIQ® with CLIQ® Connect from Abloy could prevent these kinds of events from happening by allowing access to be granted remotely, so incidents can be dealt with swiftly.
Secure key management
PROTEC2 CLIQ® allows for the remote management of disparate or large electronic master-keyed sites, provides audit trails on locks and padlocks, and allows lost or stolen keys to be invalidated, assuring secure key management at all times. Innovative CLIQ® Connect enables PROTEC2 CLIQ® keys to be activated through a smartphone using Bluetooth 4.0 technology, offering flexibility, time-saving and ease of use of remote access control.
The system is ideally suited to organisations that have a number of engineers and contractors visiting remote sites, and offers a solution for many different sectors including defence, utilities, telecoms, transport, education and healthcare.
Investing in access control
Steve Wintle, Head of CNI at Abloy UK, said: “We can see from the example of Thames Water that many businesses are under resourced, and this is often how mistakes and accidents can happen.
“Investment in a system such as CLIQ® Connect could have saved a business such as Thames a significant fine – not to mention the cost of negative publicity and the impact this could have on share price.
“By de-centralising the authentication of access, the system can act as a secondary confirmation, and access and actions can be double checked, preventing costly incidents such as this.”