The demand for access control and video management solutions is rising rapidly across industries. Every day, organizations big and small are starting to streamline their security infrastructures, allowing them to monitor, manage, and respond to events from a single, easy to use interface. Connecting access control and video management (VMS) not only improves the user experience but also gives organizations heightened control over their properties, making investing in an integrated ProdataKey (PDK) access control solution more and more of no-brainer.
The Growing Demand for Integrated Access + Video
Integrated access control and video management is quickly becoming the standard in the security industry driven by the growing demand for comprehensive, streamlined solutions. According to recent reports, integrated systems have had significant growth especially in the last few years. In 2023, 37% of security systems had integrated access control and video management, up from 34% in 2022, and marking a 13% increase since 2020.
Several factors contribute to this shift. First, businesses today require more efficient ways to manage and monitor their security operations. Integrated systems provide a single, cohesive interface that eliminates the need to switch between multiple platforms, reducing the risk of human error and enabling faster decision-making. Additionally, the introduction of cloud-based technologies has made it easier for organizations to implement and manage these integrated solutions, regardless of their size or industry.
Ways Access Control and VMS Integrate
1. Real-Time Soft Triggers
One of the standout features of many access control and VMS integrations, including PDK’s integration with leading platforms such as Digital Watchdog, Turing, and Hanwha, is the ability to initiate access control events, or software triggers, directly from the VMS interface. System administrators can lock and unlock doors in real time while monitoring live video feeds, allowing them to visually verify and grant access to guests or respond swiftly to potential threats. For example, if a suspicious individual is spotted on camera, the admin can quickly lock the door to prevent unauthorized access. Door unlock software triggers can even be configured to automatically relock the door after a specified time to add an extra layer of security.
2. Native VMS Alerts
Integrated access control with video management software delivers a comprehensive solution that enables real-time monitoring, automatic event correlation, and enhanced context. ProdataKey’s integration with video management systems sends all access event history to the VMS’s native alert panels along with all other alert data coming to the VMS system. All access control information is overlaid live video feeds including the date and time, name of the user, specific credential information, name of the door or reader, and access granted or denied.
“When you think about what a VMS does is it gives you a video feed, but it doesn’t tell you who that person is and saves any context. So, what our integration does is send all of the metadata associated with that access event into the VMS and provide whoever is monitoring, with that context,”
Billy Murphy, Integrations Software Engineer at PDK
This makes it easy for security personnel to visually verify that the user entering has appropriate authorization and is not using someone else’s credential.
3. Critical Event Alerts
Access control and VMS integration have the power to play a significant role in how organizations and businesses manage their security and respond to events. PDK offers an additional Force Acknowledge feature for Critical Event Alerts with its VMS integration. Critical events are more serious security events such as, Access Denied, Card Unknown, Door Forced, Door Propped, that often require immediate response from security personnel or system administrators. “The admin needs to acknowledge the event took place. It’s not just going to get buried with all the other events if you have a really large system,” explained Murphy. Critical Event Alerts require acknowledgement within the VMS by security personnel and in some cases a note to be added for the notification to disappear, helping ensure significant events don’t go unnoticed.
4. Bookmarks
In addition to access event alerts, ProdataKey and video management integration simplifies incident investigations with bookmarking. For every access event, a bookmark is created that includes all contextual information, including date and time, user, and location. Security personnel can quickly filter through events, such as when a specific door was unlocked or when a Request to Exit (REX) was activated. Users can even search for bookmarks by person, location, or event, making it easier to filter through terabytes of video data, especially for large systems with tens or hundreds of cameras. Having immediate access to correlated video footage helps organizations accurately construct timelines, identify individuals, and speed up investigations.
To conclude, the trend toward integrated security solutions is certainly expected to continue to rise, and ProdataKey is committed to staying at the forefront. PDK, as a specialized manufacturer, can focus on the most niche aspects of access control, and then integrate with other leading specialized platforms to deliver the best possible solutions to customers. It is clear that by offering robust integration with video management systems, PDK provides its users with the tools they need to protect their assets, people, and operations—all from a single, intuitive platform.
