Audit Objective
Did Niskayuna Central School District (District) officials properly manage and monitor building access accounts and devices?
Audit Period
July 1, 2024 – November 30, 2025
We extended our audit period to March 17, 2026, to review access activity logs.
Understanding the Audit Area
Building access controls are essential for enhancing security and enabling school officials to manage and monitor entry points within educational institutions. These systems authenticate a user through devices such as key fobs, keycards, badges, or similar technologies, helping to ensure only authorized individuals can enter school buildings. By limiting access in this way, schools can better safeguard their facilities and maintain a safe and secure environment for students, teachers, staff and visitors.
The District utilizes a building access management system (system) with 1,140 active building access accounts (accounts), including 997 devices issued to current employees, and 212 issued to non-employees, of which 85 are shared devices.1 Each of the District’s eight school buildings have one public point of entry. Employees may also access the buildings through additional secured entry points, which require a device for entry.
Audit Summary
District officials did not properly manage and monitor building access accounts and devices (badges). As a result, there was a potential risk for unauthorized access to District school buildings, compromising building security and safety for students, teachers, staff and visitors. Specifically, the District had active, but unneeded, accounts with assigned badges in the system:
- 66 individuals, including 61 employees and five non-employees, had duplicate active badges, including two individuals with three active badges.
- 15 shared badges at one school building were not tracked, including one that was not accounted for.
Although District officials had a process for adding accounts in the system, no one periodically reviewed active accounts to determine whether they were needed. Additionally, the monitoring process for shared badges varied by school building and was not effective. These issues occurred because District officials did not develop written policies and procedures for monitoring badges.
This report includes three recommendations that, if implemented, will help District officials improve management and monitoring of building access accounts and badges.
This audit was conducted pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the Office of the New York State Comptroller’s (OSC’s) authority as set forth in Article 3 of the New York State General Municipal Law (GML). The audit’s methodology and standards are included in Appendix C.
The Board of Education (Board) has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. A written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the findings and recommendations in this report must be prepared and provided to OSC within 90 days, pursuant to Section 35 of GML, Section 2116-a (3)(c) of the New York State Education Law and Section 170.12 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education. To the extent practicable, implementation of the CAP must begin by the end of the next fiscal year. For more information on preparing and filing your CAP, please refer to our brochure, Responding to an OSC Audit Report, which was provided with the draft audit report. The CAP should be posted on the District’s website for public review.
1 A shared account or device is assigned to a user for a specific role or function but not assigned to a specific individual (e.g., vendors or first responders).