Based in Eden Terrace, Auckland, New Zealand, Soar Printing offers a comprehensive range of printing services. It operates 24 hours a day, 6 days a week and employs 80 shift workers.
Like many businesses, Soar suffered its fair share of theft and vandalism. However, when its premises were broken into and a car stolen and destroyed, Soar decided to upgrade their security measures from CCTV cameras and an alarm system.
With the assistance of Chubb New Zealand Ltd, in 2004 Soar installed a Cardax FT access control system from Gallagher Security Management Systems, a division of the Gallagher Group.
Fred Soar, Managing Director, comments that he was particularly impressed with the partitioning the system affords them - different people within the company have different levels of access to various parts of the company based on their access requirements and level of authority.
Cardax FT allowed Soar to tighten its security effectively in an unobtrusive manner. Staff members simply badge their access tokens to a reader mounted next to each access controlled door.
An audit trail of access events is recorded in the Cardax FT system. Fred uses these records for a variety of purposes including checking on staff work attendance if necessary, and reviewing historical records of access events at the time of a crime for example. The Cardax FT audit trail can be matched with CCTV footage to get a full picture of events at specific times.
"I particularly like the flexibility and convenience Cardax FT provides," says Fred. If a staff member joins or leaves the company, their access privileges can be added or deleted quickly and efficiently. If someone loses their access token, access privileges associated with that token can be deleted immediately. The integrity of Soar's security is easily maintained.
Installation of the Cardax FT system had a variety of unexpected benefits:
- With comprehensive site security in place, Soar was able to renegotiate its insurance contracts to reduce premiums.
- Company culture improved - being able to identify the perpetrators of thefts (people unconnected to the company) meant that suspicion amongst staff of fellow employees was eliminated.
- The reporting functionality of the system was more user-friendly and has been particularly valuable in reducing crime and in resolving employee absence issues.
Fred can rest easy knowing who goes where and when. "When you have core
assets to protect - staff safety, customers' intellectual property and printing equipment - it's necessary to be able to monitor and control people's movements through the premises".
Soar currently has 9 doors monitored by the system. Cardax FT is fully scalable so it can grow as the company grows. In the future Soar has the option to integrate its intruder alarms monitoring and CCTV system, so that a full audit trail of access and security events can be maintained.
"Our image with our customers and potential customers is enhanced as they recognise that we're taking all possible steps to ensure that their intellectual property is being handled as safely and securely as possible," comments Fred. "We are very satisfied with Cardax FT and can envision extending the system to our other plant in Penrose in the future."
