A Layered Approach to Securing School Access and Ensuring Campus Safety

School leaders are being asked to do something that feels almost contradictory: preserve an open, welcoming learning environment while also preventing unauthorized access, reducing risk and responding faster when something goes wrong. The reality is that campus safety isn’t a single product purchase — it’s a posture built over time, often across aging infrastructure, fragmented budgets and multiple stakeholder groups with different priorities.

For K-12 and higher education schools alike, the best outcomes come from a layered approach to physical security that strengthens perimeter and interior access in progressive steps, integrates systems where it matters most and aligns operations so the technology can be used effectively.

The layers that matter most for day-to-day prevention are access control and visitor management. As the “front door” disciplines of physical security, these are high-impact, highly visible and often the easiest places to generate meaningful risk reduction quickly.

When schools describe their access control challenges, the conversation often starts with hardware, including issues with old doors, failing readers, inconsistent locks and cameras that don’t cover key entry points. Aging infrastructure is a major obstacle — however, for most educational institutions, especially in higher education, the biggest challenge is often political and operational, not technical.

The most complex challenges include circumstances like:

• Disparate buildings with disparate systems. Let’s say that the college of science installs a brand-new access control system along with cloud storage and state-of-the art facial recognition technology built into their building’s video surveillance system while the college of communications is running the same decade-old, tape-based video surveillance system. If a security event were to occur on campus between these buildings, investigating it would be a time-consuming and complex task because this patchwork of systems would not be able to share data or be managed centrally.
• Decentralized decision-making. Even within a single district or university, every building has separate goals, budgets and stakeholders, creating inconsistent standards and uneven enforcement.
• Security upgrades triggered by incidents. Many schools don’t make the decision to modernize their physical security systems until a serious event occurs on campus or nearby, when urgency spikes and decisions are made under pressure. That combination of old infrastructure, fragmented ownership and reactive purchasing creates the most common point of failure: Schools buy tools that can’t scale, can’t integrate or can’t be consistently operated across the campus.

By prioritizing repeatable patterns, a layered approach to access control helps standardize entry points with consistent credentialing and a visitor workflow that works the same way every time, no matter which campus or building is being monitored.

A layered approach to physical security is a progressive capability that begins with fundamentals that then “upscale” into smarter, more proactive prevention and response.

For access and visitor management, that layered model consists of five practical tiers:

1. Perimeter and entry-point design (the “choke point” layer)
2. Door-level access control (who can enter, when and where)
3. Visitor verification and routing (who is here and why)
4. Real-time awareness and alerting (what’s happening now)
5. Unified operations and continuous improvement (how you sustain it)

However, achieving this layered approach takes more than tools; it requires unified stakeholders, coordinated budgets and committed leadership.

While integration between buildings, departments and colleges is often technically feasible, one of the major barriers to success is alignment across stakeholder groups, budgets and priorities. Even at the “hardware” layer, success depends on governance: who owns the standards, who funds maintenance and who is accountable for policies.

To address this, start with the basics. First, define a campuswide security goal that covers what you are trying to prevent, detect and respond to. Then, establish minimum standards for entry, visitor processing and credentialing. Finally, identify owners from IT, facilities, school administration, and (if applicable) district police and safety officers, as each has a role in daily operations.

It’s important to define governance first in the physical security modernization process, well before focusing on technology. Maturity matters, and layering lets you improve outcomes at your operational pace.

A layered approach starts by asking: How many ways can someone enter the building during school hours? Then, worktoward reducing and standardizing those pathways with actions like:

• Establishing a single primary public entrance during the day, with other doors configured for access only or staff-only.
• Improving physical design where possible with signage, fencing, door hardware and line-of-sight so that the campus naturally guides visitors to the correct location.
• Aligning “open campus” expectations with reality. Even in welcoming schools, there should be clarity: for example, where do visitors go first?

This approach doesn’t necessarily require futuristic tech; it requires agreement and consistency.

Once stakeholder groups are aligned on budgets and risks, educational institutions can begin to implement access control that meaningfully reduces unauthorized entry. The key is to begin with a risk-based plan that includes:

• Role-based access. Staff and students should have access aligned to academic needs and schedules based on their function.
• Time-based schedules. Access policies should change automatically based on which functions must happen after hours.
• Credential consistency. Whether using badges, mobile credentials or PINs, the goal is standardization across the district — not “one-off” solutions per site.

Visitor management is where many schools still rely on manual steps: paper logs, informal ID checks and inconsistent rules depending on who is at the front desk. This can be risky not only because it can miss threats, but because it creates confusion during incidents as well. A layered strategy treats visitor management as a core access control discipline with actions like:

• Pre-screening and registering visitors. Modern visitor management can screen and register visitors before they enter, helping staff confirm their identity and purpose.
• Using visible, standardized badges. By communicating legitimacy and making it easier for staff to identify anomalies, badges can act as a behavioral control and can trigger response workflows based on certain situations.
• Arrival notifications and workflow automation. Visitor management can automatically notify a meeting host that their guest has arrived or create a workflow for the specific case. This can be especially helpful for situations like assigning a volunteer to host a campus tour or automatically creating a maintenance ticket for a contractor who will be on site.
  

• Leveraging video intelligence technology like video intercoms at the main entrance can help visually screen visitors before safely admitting them. This layer is especially important in instances where schools are short-staffed or when doors must remain locked by default.
• This layer can help enable features like remote confirmation of visitor identity and intent, controlled unlocking only after verification and faster denial of entry without confrontation.
• This is also where integration starts to matter more. Access control, video surveillance and visitor management can work together reduce ambiguity: Staff can see who is requesting access, speak with them and unlock the door — all while capturing an audit trail.

When schools begin their physical security modernization journey with video surveillance then add access control and visitor management solutions later and attempt to unify all moving parts afterward, arriving at a coherent posture can be a challenge.

Starting with governance, setting clear goals and budgets before implementing physical security technology helps integrate systems and operations, leading to better outcomes like:

• Faster investigations. Correlate events with video footage without hunting across systems.
• Better incident response. Move from reactive review to proactive response, especially as analytics and intelligence layers are added.
• Consistent policies across buildings. Standard workflows reduce confusion and reliance on individual staff habits while reinforcing policy for personnel.

The best way to begin this journey toward modernizing access control and visitor management is with comprehensive physical security assessments and site surveys. Together, these can help identify whether your current system can truly support the institution’s goals and where technology investments are needed.

A strong assessment typically analyzes:

• Entry points and traffic patterns
• Door hardware condition and failure rates
• Credential policy (who has access, how it’s granted/revoked)
• Visitor procedures
• Response workflows (how lockdowns occur, who gets notified)

The urgency for these assessments and review typically occurs after an incident occurs, like a delayed response during a lockdown or nearby events that increase the perception of risk. The opportunity is to convert that urgency into a sustainable plan, not a one-time reaction.

For example, when Bowie State University faced a major challenge with disparate, aging and unconnected security systems, its IT and public safety teams struggled with inconsistent camera performance, missing documentation and an inefficient, manual process for retrieving footage. CDW helped the university develop a cohesive, campuswide physical security strategy by consulting with leadership, assessing existing infrastructure, and guiding the transition to a cloud-based, unified video surveillance solution. This modernization streamlined monitoring, improved incident response, and laid the foundation for a scalable, strategically managed security environment.

This is just one way that progressive “upscaling” of physical security technology can help institutions move from basic control to proactive, unified situational awareness.

Technology matters, but consistent execution matters more. The best access control system fails if doors are propped open, if visitor policies vary by building or if stakeholders can’t agree on common goals. That’s why a layered approach works: It improves safety in achievable steps, generates quick wins and creates the organizational alignment needed for more advanced capabilities later.