Your badge reader is fine.
The door next to it isn't.
Most people ony know security through the lense of marketing — a badge sysytem, a camera, a lock from whoever was cheapest. Nobody stands outside and asks if your really stopping anyone.
Why locksmithing matters?
Most people selling physical security assessments have read about how locks fail. I open them for a living.
I spend my working week on the inside of the hardware — cylinders, latches, exit devices, master systems, credentials, and the ways all of it wears out or gets worked around. That's a different vantage point from someone who walks a floor with a clipboard and a checklist. I know which brand of lock on your back door takes ninety seconds and which one is genuinely a problem. I can even recommend and impliment remediation.
Physical assessment
Recon, threat model, and budget are agreed before anything happens. Every assessment ends with a report: what worked, what didn't, what it would cost an attacker in time and skill, and what to fix first. The point is a punch list you can act on, not a story about how clever the tester was.
- We MeetWe meet and discuss what your threat model is and what assets are of the highest value. We discuss expectation and form a plan.
- ReconnaissanceWhat can I find about your building through free flowing public information.
- WalkthroughI or we can walk around, test theories, insure things are functioning and PROTECTING as they should, no guess work.
- Report and EducationFindings ordered by what an attacker would actually use, with the fixes that close the most doors for the least money.
What I look at
Key control
- Where are the keys
- Who holds which key, on paper and in fact
- Keys that walked out with old staff
- Whether your keyway can be copied at a hardware store
- Do you expose your keys on your desk or lanyard
Credentials and badges
- What card technology you're actually running
- Whether a badge can be read and copied from a pocket
- Cards still active for people who left
- Keypad codes shared, written down, or worn into the buttons
- What a cloned credential would reach
Doors and the building
- Latches that open to a shim or a strip of plastic
- Exit hardware that works from the wrong side
- Propped doors, gapped frames, unpinned hinges
- Loading docks, roof access, and the smoking-area door
- Where a camera is pointed versus where the way in is
Start with a conversation
Tell me the building, roughly how many doors, and what's prompting the question.