Security Patterns for Physical Access Control Systems

Physical security has received increased attention after 9/11. However, access control to physical units has not been explored much. On the other hand, there is a rich literature on access control to information. These two areas appear converging as seen by recent products and studies. However, use of different notations and implementation details make this convergence harder. We need to try to take this convergence at a more abstract level first. Although introduced about 10 years ago, security patterns have recently become accepted by industry and two books on this topic have appeared recently. Security patterns for information access control have appeared but now we extend this concept to access for physical units. The unification of information and physical access control is just beginning but the strong requirements of infrastructure protection will make this convergence to happen rapidly. Examining existing systems, industry standards and government regulations, we describe, in the form of patterns, the core set of features a physical access control system should have. The paper illustrates the structure and use of these patterns.