Color-coding of Badges?

I would give more thought to the security objective when color coding. Is it more important to know if an individual is a permanent employee, contractor, temp, or visitor, or whether they have legitimate and authorized access in a given area?

The employment status is rarely the real issue in my experience.

Color codes work well for quick identification, especially if there is a hierarchy of security areas.

You could also break things down further through the use of color and shape codes or different badge designs if the security requires it. Just because someone is qualified to enter one security area because of badge color doesn't mean that they should be in other areas.

You do have to watch out for the fact that color codes can make people complacent, especially if there are ways of circumventing the hardware security. It doesn't take much 'social engineering' for a person with the right badge to talk their way into less secure areas, especially if that area has had hardware problems.

It is even easier to 'social engineer' an entry if the organization has people wearing 'uniforms' for tasks like maintenance and special manufacturing.

I designed, built and implemented such a badge program for a multi-state bank in Arizona and it was received very well and has been expanded to the bank's entire enterprise.

However, there was a definite elitism surfacing during the development of the badge tiers. The executives wanted a specific gold badge emblazoned with the word "EXECUTIVE" in larger type than the bank's logo or employee name. Along with the distinction, they wanted all executive-level employees to have unlimited access to all their regional facilities. I fought this to the end and eventually won the argument that the last thing the bank wanted in it's security program was a caste system; not only for the sake of operational efficiency, but because of the negative connotation such a badge distinction would have on the general employee populace. Also, I successfully argued that if one of these "executive" badges was lost - say in a shopping mall, or a convenience store - did they really want whomever found the badge to have unlimited access to their locations, even if only until the badge could be rendered useless by the security team?

Color-coding of badges works. It's not foolproof because most people never even look at a person's badge in the course of a regular business day, or specifically at the badge of someone they don't know. By and large, the average employee just isn't that observant without a security encouragement program effectively in place. But for the percentage of employees who do notice, and for the security guards who monitor access-by-badge, it's a quick visual cue for who should and shouldn't be in a given location.

Color-coding is a smart move, provided that the security system behind the badges is designed, implemented and run efficiently.