Seattle Church Secures Doors With CyberLock

  • Oct 20, 2009

After being established in 1869, the Seattle First Presbyterian Church has seen the city grow up around it. Security has been an ongoing issue, especially because the church proper encompasses one city block -- with 17 doors.

“Our perimeters had been breached many times, and we experienced vandalism, and thefts of our sound and audio equipment,” said Jace Allen, church elder. “We wanted our church to be a safe place for our people in an unsafe environment, so we were tasked with finding an access control solution.”

First Presbyterian chose CyberLock because the building’s existing door locks could be easily retrofitted with CyberLock electronic cylinders.

“CyberLock offered the quickest and least expensive action we could take,” Allen said.

In March 2008, CyberLocks were installed in the New Life Community ministerial area of the church. Next, the church converted the high-tech Media Lab, Audio Equipment Room and Sunday School Nursery to CyberLock. More recently, officials installed CyberLocks in their newly renovated sanctuary.

“The system is scalable, so we can easily expand into other areas of our facility,” Allen said.

The church’s most trusted staff and volunteers are given an electronic key. If someone loses their key, it can be quickly blocked from accessing any locks.

Before CyberLock, they looked at re-keying and found it to be an unpalatable solution. After re-keying, they still would have had a system that could be compromised by the loss of one key.

“With CyberLock, we will never have to re-key again,” Allen said. “We especially like being able to program each person’s key to allow or restrict their access to specific areas at certain times of the day and week. The verifiable log of events the system provides allows us to monitor who is accessing what area and when.”

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