What Electronic Door Lock Would You Buy?

zentigger asks: "I work for an ISP that supports internet in several dozen remote areas. Our POPs are typically fairly small shed-like structures, with a couple racks of equipment. For the most part, we can manage this stuff in-band, but frequently we need to have a local agent physically access the equipment for some minor maintenance work or adjustments. As time goes on, the shuffle of keys is becoming farcical and expensive. What we need is an electronic lock of some sort that can be reprogrammed remotely (preferably from a remote console via serial or directly via ethernet) that will stand up to extreme weather. Google certainly turns up lots of glossy brochures — although I don't see how they can -all- be 'The heaviest duty lock you can buy!' Does anyone have good experiences with any particular products or perhaps other means of dealing with the key shuffle?"

Re:Don't give out keys at all.

[mollymoo]

That would maximise the response time (keys would have to be found) for the most critical incidents (network failure), which doesn't sound like a great idea to me.

How to do the keypad

[mrcaseyj]

I was thinking of putting an electronic lock on my door. One of the problems is that if there is someone near that you don't completely trust they may see you entering the combination. My cousin shoulder surfed my password once so I'm a little paranoid about this sort of thing. You can move to block them from seeing you enter it but that can be insulting to your guest. That's a significant issue for someone like my grandmother who may be entering her combo in front of customers she doesn't want to offend.

So I'm thinking that the way to do it is to have a keypad facing down so that you curl your fingers up to push the buttons so the person near you doesn't see. I figure having only four buttons would make it easier to enter the combo without looking. Buttons on the bottom would also have the advantage of keeping water out of your buttons.

One of the reasons I wanted a combo was I figured it would also be a lot faster than pulling the key out of my pocket every time. In fact I think a quick combo lock would be so quick that it wouldn't be too much trouble to just leave the door locked all the time.

Some other good features for the lock would be different combinations for everyone in the house. And some one time use combos and guest combos.

By the way if you are hiding a key outside your house make sure you put it around the corner or something so if someone is with you then you won't have to reveal your hiding place.

Re:Bit o' Warning

[sirket]

A user should have a combination- not the lock. A user leaves and his code is removed- the lock code isn't changed. In addition- a user uses the same combination on every single lock. It's hardly complicated. It sounds like the systems this municipality used was just broken.

Re:Don't give out keys at all.

[MentalRuin]

Look at what universities use. They have thousands of users that need access to various areas, but only to very specific areas around campus. This includes students as well as staff.

They need to control who has access, as well as when access has been gained. Most employers now use some kind of ID system, the 'access keys' could be included in the ID. It could be as simple as RFID to magnetic stripes. You could also combine these with keycodes chosen by the individual users. With this dual level of authentication, the keycodes would not need to be updated regularly because of the dual authentication.

You could use one of your onsite servers to control access and log access. These servers could be updated in real time. The only worry would be that the server could not be updated quickly enough after an employee was fired. This is where HR comes in, if you have your system immediately revoke ID's upon employee termination, terminated employees would not be able to gain access. On the off chance that the servers could not be updated due to communication problems, the server that controls access logs would show that the terminated employee gained access to a facility after their rights had been revoked. Combine this with video surveillance you will have both digital and pictorial proof of the illegal access. In a worst case scenario, one of you security officers would need to physically show up to the site to allow access to someone that has the right to access the facility, but the inability to do so.