Could Cheaper, More Open Access Control Hardware Help Make Schools Safer?

What happens when the industry stops thinking about access control as a product category and starts thinking about it as a platform?

This week on Secured, Lee Odess looks at dormakaba’s latest results and the end of its three-year transformation, Acre’s push toward a more unified platform, and what both say about where physical security is headed.

He also digs into two community contributions that approach the same problem from different angles: AI authorization and access control as a cybersecurity battleground. And in My View, Lee takes on a question that generated some strong reactions: would lower upfront costs and more open, subscription-based access control actually help us build safer schools, hospitals, and public spaces?

The industry has plenty of reasons why something won’t work. The question is whether that mindset is keeping us from building what comes next.