Campus security is a hot topic when prospective students start looking at which college they should attend.
Often times, students will pass over a campus that is located in a dangerous area, behind on updating its safety policies or even behind on adopting trending security measures.
One security method that is still catching fire in higher education is mobile solutions.
Mobile solutions are ideal for colleges that have high-traffic areas or large student populations that need more control. They are also ideal for students, faculty and staff that have some type of mobile device glued to their hands on a day to day basis.
Ryan Ockuly, National Sales Director for Alertus says that today’s college students are “very mobile,” and rely on their devices to get most of their information.
He says mobile security solutions are a good way to keep students and device-oriented faculty and staff posted in case of an emergency.
“They constantly have it with them, and that provides a good communication outlet for the university to reach a large number of individuals,” Ockuly says.
Colleges have an infinite number of options to choose from when it comes to mobile solutions. Some campuses prefer to improve access control with turnstiles or by installing electromechanical lock systems, or even boost loud crowd control with a traditional megaphone.
Others rely on alert beacons or apps to push out a mass message about an on-campus emergency.
Jamie Underwood, Director of Marketing Communications at Alertus says an institution should have a clear, uniform message when it launches a message via mobile technologies to people on campus.
“A lot of studies and reports have shown that most people, in the event of an emergency, not only want to know what’s going on, but want to be notified about what they can do to secure themselves,” she says. “Once you put the all-clear out, keep people informed as far as how the situation is unfolding so they can take the proper precautions.”
Ockuly says colleges should consider integrating mobile solutions with the security technologies they already have in place.
He says marrying the two together doubles up on keeping emergency messages consistent and quick to send throughout campus.
“Choose a system that allows you to integrate,” he says. “You want those [technologies] integrated so that the same message that is being delivered to their smartphones is also the one that others are getting a text message on…Instead of having to go from system to system, they want to choose many different modes of communication so everyone gets the message where they are and what they have on them. Integration is huge and will bring all this together.”
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