Comment Re:A get off my lawn moment (Score 3, Insightful) 73
The reason large places like universities moved to electronic locks was for the cost savings. With the old brass-keys, you needed a lock shop and a decently sized staff of locksmiths. Lose a dorm room key? Not a big deal, send the locksmith out to re-core the door & give the student a new key. Lose a key that opened a lot of doors & a lot of folks had access to? That's expensive as all the doors now need re-coring and new keys need to be cut & distributed. It takes a lot of time, energy, person-power, and inconveniences everybody who had access to those doors.
Electronic locks on the other hand... Lose your ID Card? No biggie, one click and that card is deactivated. Person goes and gets new card & about 30 minutes later all of their access is restored without all the time/hassle/expense. Furthermore, only the person who lost the card is inconvenienced rather than anybody who might also have had a key to that door. Students leave their dorm rooms at the end of the year? No need to re-key the entire place, just de-authorized their cards from their assigned rooms & setup the ACLs for the next group of residents. All fully automated with very little human involvement needed for the change process.
