Introduction

Securing facilities like office buildings, server rooms, and labs is of paramount importance for enterprises. Enterprise physical security systems typically consist of two independent subsystems: badge-based access control to restrict entry to authorized personnel and security camera systems for perimeter security and monitoring. This article explores the necessity and potential for integrating these two systems to enhance perimeter security and simplify management.

Badge-driven access control

The majority of enterprises and big organizations rely on badge-based access control systems to safeguard their facilities, data centers, and restricted zones. These systems authenticate individuals using personalized ID badges, enabling secure, policy-driven entry management across the organization. Beyond simply restricting access, they offer valuable data for compliance, risk management, and operational visibility. These are usually integrated with many other systems, like Human Resources, Incident Response, and Operations. 

These access control systems are usually centrally managed with software applications like OnGuard, which are robust and powerful. In addition to integration with card readers, they also integrate seamlessly with other systems to provide capabilities, such as

• Dynamic access management based on HR system integration
• Visitor management, temporary access
• Alerts and alarms related to physical entities, e.g., Door unlocked
• Restricted and policy-driven entry management, E.g, main door vs data center entrance access

Camera-based surveillance & monitoring

Camera-based surveillance systems provide real-time monitoring, event detection, and post-event analysis across the facilities. Most of the modern Camera systems and Network Video Recorders (NVRs)  are IP-based and offer features like high-res video, remote access, and recording. These can be integrated with intelligent systems to provide features such as intrusion detection & recognition. These camera systems can also provide audio feeds in addition to the video streams. 

Limitations of having independent systems

While both these systems are very powerful and provide a lot of capabilities, there are certain limitations as well. Access events lack immediate visual verification, making it harder to detect misuse. Without integration, correlating badge activity with corresponding video footage becomes a manual, time-consuming process. This silo’ed approach reduces operational efficiency, delays threat response, and limits the ability to generate actionable insights from combined data. Some of the real examples of challenges faced:

• How to verify that the access card is used by the intended user? 
• Is someone tailgating with an employee?
• Is someone loitering outside the main door to get an opportunity to enter? Or, is it an employee speaking on his cellphone?
• Is the door being held open as a courtesy by an employee to colleagues, or is it left open by mistake?

These are some of the many challenging scenarios that are possible due to a lack of bridging the visual information with access control and physical events. 

Integration using a unified correlation platform

Correlating access control system events with surveillance events can unlock a new level of security intelligence. A unified security platform with access to both pieces of information can significantly enhance situational awareness, operational efficiency, and response capabilities. 

Every badge swipe or access event can be automatically linked to corresponding images from the pre-mapped security cameras, enabling real-time visual verification and faster investigation of anomalies such as unauthorized entry, tailgating, or forced access.

It not only reduces manual effort but also improves incident response time. For enterprises, this convergence can provide situational awareness, enhance operational efficiency in responding to threats. 

Artificial Intelligence-based Smart Guarding has become very effective in providing actionable intelligence and credible deterrence against intrusion and break-ins. These systems, which mostly process visual information (image/video streams), can become truly multimodal when they incorporate data streams such as access control events into a unified decision making framework. By ingesting access control alerts (e.g., badge swipes, denied entries, door held open), the AI engine can correlate these identity-driven events with real-time video analytics, behavioral detection models. 

Fig 1: Integration of Access & Security systems

Sentry AI – OnGuard Integration

OnGuard, a widely used enterprise-grade access control platform, not only provides robust access management capabilities but also supports seamless integration with certified third-party systems via event and alarm subscriptions. Sentry AI is now a certified OnGuard partner and can be configured to receive real-time access events directly from an OnGuard installation. You can read more about the integration here.  

Sentry AI’s cloud-based, scalable Smart Guard platform processes security events through a secure AI pipeline, enabling intelligent threat detection and proactive monitoring. With native integrations across a wide range of security camera systems & Video Management Systems (VMS) such as Milestone XProtect and Eagle Eye Networks, Sentry AI delivers a comprehensive suite of monitoring and deterrence capabilities designed for Global Security Operations Centers (GSOCs) and on-site security teams. The deterrence capabilities are provided by integrating the output systems, such as speakers, sirens, and alarm lights.

For OnGuard integration, Sentry provides a lightweight event subscriber that can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud, as long as it has IP connectivity to the OnGuard server. This subscriber can be configured to listen for standard OnGuard events such as “Access Granted,” “Access Denied,” “Door Held Open,” and more.

Sentry’s user interface also provides a way to configure a mapping between access control devices (e.g., card readers) and associated security cameras. This enables Smart Guard systems to correlate access events with camera events, providing contextual alerts such as tailgating or unauthorized access to security operators. Users receive access-related alerts enhanced with visual elements such as live views and person or vehicle recognition, providing better and comprehensive situational awareness.

For example, the “Main hallway” camera can be mapped “Main entrance” card reader, which enables the user to view the video streams and image alerts from the Main hallway camera every time an access event happens on the Main entrance. 

Fig 2: Sentry-Onguard integration with Sentry being the unification layer

Sentry AI serves as an intelligent unification layer, offering powerful capabilities for proactive monitoring, threat deterrence, and actionable insights from access control and security systems. Most importantly, it provides a holistic view of on-premise activities, enhancing the situational awareness and operational efficiency of security teams tasked with protecting the facility.

Summary

Integrating badge-based access control with camera-based surveillance is crucial for enhancing enterprise physical security. While both systems are powerful independently, their siloed operation creates vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. A unified platform, like Sentry AI’s Smart Guard, bridges this gap by correlating access events with real-time video & image alerts. This integration enables visual verification of badge usage, detection of tailgating or loitering, and immediate alerts for anomalies. By leveraging AI, such integrated systems provide actionable intelligence, proactive threat deterrence, and a holistic view of on-premise activities, significantly improving situational awareness and operational efficiency for security teams.
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