According to Barry Klontz, IT Manager, Gilbert Christian Schools, the district’s Agritopia and high school campuses were already in operation for a number of years and many of their existing systems had begun to reach the end of their lifecycle. Ultimately, school officials opted to adopt a facial recognition solution they hoped would both improve security and reduce their reliance on physical credentials alone. However, they soon realized that the biometric system by itself would not satisfy their security needs. “We give out keys all the time and instead of re-keying the buildings, we thought the easiest way to keep things secure was to give out keys that we had some kind of way to manage digitally so we contracted out for a security system,” Klontz says. “We looked at both facial recognition and fingerprint solutions before settling on facial recognition but it just didn’t serve every purpose that we wanted it to, such as providing us with the capability of setting up alarms for a lockdown,” Klontz said. The Challenge Looking for someone who could provide them with the backend infrastructure necessary to run their state-of- the-art system as well as some of the more advanced features they desired, the district turned to local systems integrator 365 Technologies who recommended the Vanderbilt SMS access control platform. “They were looking for a wow factor and that’s why they went with the facial recognition system but unfortunately, the company that sold the system to them sold them just the facial recognition part and not the engine behind it which is the access control system,” said Freddie Haber, President, 365 Technologies.