School Safety | News

RFID Security Company Offers K-12 RFID Alarm Badges

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/30/13

A company that develops radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies and products for healthcare and manufacturing has developed an alerting product specifically for K-12. Guard RFID Solutions has announced SafeGuard K-12 Safety System, which is intended to speed up communication in an emergency situation.

The system consists of badges equipped with RFID and management software. The latter can integrate the technology with on-site video to provide "live views" of a location from which an alarm originates and with access control systems that can lock down doors within specific school areas. The badges provide for "man down" detection, duress alarms, and bi-directional communications, which allows for coded signals to be sent to the badge (such as a code signaling that the alarm has been received by security people).

According to the company, alarms can be initiated from anywhere within the school site and instant notifications dispatched via the use of a remote monitoring station, e-mail, and pagers. Those notifications can be sent to on-site and off-site public safety people.

"The SafeGuard K-12 Safety system permits instant notification of a security event simultaneously to public safety agencies and school staff, which enables a more rapid response to a threat and therefore reducing potential harm. Its ability to automatically and swiftly secure the perimeter or selective zones can contain the threat and minimize exposure," said Zahir Abji, the company's president and CEO. "Equipping both, students and staff with GuardRFID's tags can provide critical demographic information to allow for more effective emergency response activities."