Managing Complex Access Control Policies at Scale

Verkada has transformed door security with a cloud-first approach focused on simplicity, security, and scalability.

We constantly work with our customers to deeply understand their security and operational challenges so we can build the most elegant access control solutions. Over the last few months, our team has built a new suite of tools to allow large organizations to more easily secure large deployments and implement complex access control policies at scale. 

Anti-passback

For spaces requiring strict management of badge usage—such as laboratories and manufacturing areas—we’ve built an anti-passback monitoring and enforcement system with best-in-class video security and investigation tools. 

Administrators can set up anti-passback by defining an access control “Area.” Areas allow organizations to define entrances and exits for a given physical space, such as a high-security room. With anti-passback turned on, any user that enters an area twice without badging out at an exit—or vice versa—will be in violation. Verkada supports both soft anti-passback, where violations are reported but not enforced, and hard anti-passback, where users in violation are denied access to entrances and exits until the violation is reviewed and cleared.

Like many Verkada access control features, reviewing and managing anti-passback violations is easy at scale. Administrators can quickly see the list of users who are in violation, review the timeline of events and camera footage leading up to a user’s violation, and clear that violation when ready. Alerts can be set up to notify any recipient when a violation has occurred.

In addition to ensuring precise permission management for highly-secure areas, anti-passback can be used to enforce a badge out policy in any building to prevent a user from fraudulently ‘passing back’ their badge to another person who does not have their own authorized credential. The feature can even be used to prevent fraudulent sharing of access to valued areas such as parking garages and lounges.

Double Badge to Override a Schedule

Large scale deployments can have hundreds or thousands of electronically secured doors, and hundreds of thousands of access members with varying roles and responsibilities. While admins can easily change a door’s schedule in Command, there are instances where other access users may need to manually override a door’s schedule. Examples include a receptionist setting a lobby door to ‘access controlled’ while they are away from the desk or a pharmacist needing to unlock a secure area during business hours. 

To allow these users to switch between access schedules without having to touch Command, we’re excited to announce double badge. With double badge, users simply tap their credential against the door reader twice within a few seconds and a schedule override is placed on (or removed from) the door. Users will be able to clearly see that a double badge scan is successful through direct feedback via the reader's LEDs. Double badge is configured within Command, where it can be enabled for a set of users within a certain time block in the door’s schedule.

Bulk CSV Credential Upload 

We constantly work to build tools that make it easier and faster to manage large scale deployments. Our improved CSV credential upload and download tool helps streamline user credential creation and management. With the tool, you can import user credentials through an easy four-step workflow. The new workflow simplifies data formatting and provides clear instructions for easy troubleshooting, allowing users to import up to 250,000 credentials in just one minute. Admins can also create multiple credentials per user. 

Door Access Report

Answering the simple question of ‘‘who has access to which doors?” is extremely important for any organization, particularly large scale deployments with thousands of doors and users. Beyond having this information for security purposes, some organizations have regulatory requirements that require them to keep auditable records of who has had access to certain doors.

We’ve built the door access report to allow administrators to quickly find the groups and users that have access to each door, with the ability to filter for just the sites or doors that the administrator is interested in. Admins can easily view a detailed report of each permissioned user and the access levels and groups that give them access to that door. The report can even be exported to CSV on demand, or saved and scheduled for delivery via email at a specific cadence.

People of Interest

Verkada’s Person of Interest (POI) video security functionality allows organizations to understand when a specific person, such as a VIP or a known bad actor, is seen by a Verkada camera. And POI alerting allows organizations to receive automated notifications anytime a POI is spotted. 

Building on these POI capabilities and our automated end-to-end SCIM user management workflow, admins can now assign a Person of Interest alert to an access user from their user profile. This capability is useful when a former employee or tenant moves from being a permissioned access user to a person of interest who may be a risk across multiple locations.

Cross-Device Programmable AUX Outputs

In November 2023 we introduced the ability to program any controller AUX output to activate and deactivate based on specific events occurring on that controller. One popular application is having a siren buzz when a door has been held open.  

Building on this, we’re excited to announce cross-device programmable AUX outputs. With this feature, organizations can use an AUX output to turn on emergency exit lights anytime any emergency exit is opened throughout the entire site, for example. 

Cross-device programmable AUX outputs leverage Verkada’s peer-to-peer communication protocol (P2P) to ensure continued cross-device functionality even when internet connectivity is lost. P2P allows two Verkada devices to communicate directly over a local area network  instead of going through the wide area network. 

We’ve also added two new status indicator icons to the door detail page to showcase the connection status of controllers communicating both peer-to-peer and via the cloud. This simple status icon helps ensure device uptime and quickly identify the root-causes of any issues. Check out our latest engineering blog to learn more about our investments in P2P.

Availability 

All of the enterprise scale access control features will be available starting February 22, 2024 for all new and existing access control customers. All features are included in existing Command access control licenses at no additional cost. 

To see all of these new features in action, be sure to stream our February 2024 Launch Event.