Locks Bring Courthouses To Order

Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM

The historic San Luis Obispo County Courthouse, located on California's Central Coast, has chosen Schlage “Locknetics on Board” Computer-Managed (CM) locksets to guard its historic facility, its new courthouse, and several high-security departments.

“When we looked into the available locking systems, we found that not only would it be a lot more expensive to hardwire our historic old courthouse, but they would have to go into the walls and that could damage the building,” says Theresa Stanton, associate capital projects coordinator for San Luis Obispo County. “We didn't want to mess with damaging our building at all.”

The county is moving away from card readers and most of the CM locks are opened with an iButton (an electronic keyfob) credential used in tandem with a PIN code for higher security. The CM locks provide a date-and-time-stamped audit trail, a feature that San Luis Obispo County officials have found useful.

“The computer department wanted to manage who was going in and out because of really expensive equipment they had on their floor, and they wanted an audit trail,” Stanton says. “The department recently went through a re-organization and several employees were let go. Because a lot of people were leaving, they wanted to be able to lock them out without having to rekey the doors.”

Maintenance employees manage the locking system using LockLink software installed on personal computers. Additionally, PDA's are used to remotely tour the locks for programming and downloading of audits.

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