Case In Point: Law Offices of Luna, Levering and Schad

Normal business activities at the successful law offices of Luna, Levering and Schad in Saunas, CA, had made their key-based access control system unmanageable. "Every good-sized law firm experiences a fairly high turnover rate in their lowerlevel staff positions," said Sherry Coletti, firm administrator at Luna, Levering. "Whenever someone left, we had to re-key our locks. In addition to valuable equipment, a law office contains sensitive, confidential information. Just re-claiming the keys isn't enough-you can't be sure you're getting them all back-so it's best to re-key your locks. The cost and inconvenience of this re-keying had gotten to be a real nuisance, so we asked our locksmith if there was a better solution."

"To solve the problem of keeping up with keys and credentials, I recommended the new Kaba E-Plex 5000 standalone electronic lock," said Scott Edelstein of AA Safe and Lock, the Kaba dealer in Santa Cruz. "It's a very durable, well-made product that offers all of the latest high-tech features: up to 3,000 individual PINs, audit reports, access schedules, optional management software that's very easy to use, and the ability to receive updates through a Palm?-based PDA. Plus, it's a very attractive lock, with a wide range of finishes that allows it to complement any d?cor.

"(The E-Plex) cut my installation time by up to 50 percent," continued Edelstein. "Plus, the field-reversible handing was a real life-saver. We installed four locks at Luna, Levering, and Schad. There were three righthanded entries and one left-handed. I was able to reverse handing at the door without even having to remove the cover plate."

"We were really happy to start enjoying the benefits of a keyless system," said Coletti, "and the ability to upload user changes from my PDA was a huge plus. We were also convinced that the audit reports would be a real benefit in the event of an asset-loss incident; but we never imagined just how quickly this feature would start paying us back-or the level of benefit we would receive.

"A few weeks after Scott installed the EPlex locks, we had a break-in," Coletti continued. "The incident occurred on the third floor of a three-story building, so even though we had kept one of the windows cracked, we were certain that the burglar got in through one of the doors. After investigating the scene, the police agreed that no one could have climbed in through the window. At that point, we thought it was an inside job, as there was no sign of forced entry.

"The audit report is one of the great features of the E-Plex, and the ability to assign a single code for each user makes it really effective. For every entry, the lock records the person who gained access and the time they came in. To our surprise, the locks reported no entries after we had all left the previous evening; only that someone had left the office at 5:20 that morning. Suddenly, it was clear that the burglar was not one of our employees."

The police immediately focused their investigation on finding a common burglar who had somehow gained entry through the window. Within a few hours, they had made an arrest. The burglar had used a grappling hook and rope to get in the third story window.

"Because of the audit capabilities of the Kaba lock," concluded Coletti, "the police were able to reach the right conclusion quickly and arrest the perpetrator before he had a chance to sell our property or stage another break-in. Our new E-Plex 5000s saved us a lot more than just the cost and man-hours of managing our security. They saved us thousands of dollars worth of equipment and helped us recover quickly from what could have been a truly disastrous event."