Beginners Guide to Physical Identity and Access Management System features

While security professionals might think Physical Identity and Access Management (PIAM) systems are for larger organizations with big budgets, the technology is now available for organizations of all sizes that need to manage physical access in a more granular way.

In this article, we will help you understand the essential features of a PIAM solution and how they deliver intelligent physical access control.

Understanding PIAM

A Physical Identity and Access Management system enable security and the business to control physical access to buildings, floors, areas and doors within their organizations. PIAM systems deliver physical access to every employee, contractor, vendor, customer or visitor in compliance with the policy and processes adopted by the business. PIAM solutions allow detailed access policies to be enforced by the physical access control system.

Essential PIAM Features

PIAM systems should deliver the following core features:

• Identity management – provide a central source of individual physical identities and profile attributes for every person with physical access to facilities

• Access management – manage access rights to individuals based on roles, policy, attributes (such as health status or purchase orders) or requests

• Access orchestration – assign, update and remove individual profiles and their physical access

• Badge management – manage credentials or badges that deliver physical access to an identity

• Security – protect and secure physical facilities in line with the security plan

• Integrations and APIs – integrate with corporate HR, learning management and ERP systems so physical access rights dynamically align with corporate identity profiles

• Process automation – power intelligent process automation to improve efficiency and reduce errors

• Reporting and analytics – deliver reporting for physical access governance, risk and compliance activities

Advanced PIAM Features

Most organizations start by implementing PIAM solutions to establish more granular control of their employee’s physical access. As the organization begins to realize the safety, security and compliance benefits of the solution, they often then begin to explore the additional features and benefits available.

• Enhanced visibility – PIAM solutions can be easily expanded to manage every employee, contractor, vendor, customer, visitor and VIP that come across all types of facilities. By expanding the types of people covered, the Security now has complete visibility of every person on their premises right now.

• Visitor management — many organizations carry stringent visitor identity and access compliance obligations. PIAM solutions with an integration to the physical access control system ensure that visitors are enabled with compliant secure access at every entry.

• Contractor management — a PIAM solution with integrations into the physical access control, ERP and contractor management systems will ensure that every contractor is enabled with physical access appropriate to the job they perform. It will ensure that every contractor meets the company’s safety, security and compliance obligations before they enter any building, facility or area.

• Safety and health management — the solution will ensure that access is only granted to workers who are trained for the job, compliant with the regulations and meet the safety and health requirements. This functionality can be extended across health checks and questionnaires, rest periods and fatigue, competencies or training certifications.

• Employee self-service — physical access management processes can be managed by workers off-site, allowing security operations to focus on critical risks and security management.

• Emergency response – PIAM now also supports evacuation management and emergency response, with accurate reporting of every category of person on-site, their location.

• Reporting and analytics – with a complete data set, Security and Facilities can now leverage enhanced reporting and analytics, for use across audit and compliance, service and resource planning, business case and budgeting development.

• Identity governance – becomes possible, and security and risk can examine the health of access compliance, the adequacy of security controls and develop a proactive security posture.

It is clear that companies can gain quantifiable safety, security, productivity and compliance advantages by implementing PIAM tools integrated into the existing physical access control system.

To find out more about RightCrowd’s PIAM solution contact us.