Grab The Axe

Grab The Axe Arizona-based, vendor-neutral security consulting for physical and cyber risk assessments.

09/04/2026

Every access control system produces a forced door report. In most buildings nobody has opened it.

The report exists on day one and nothing is scheduled to send it. A door with a worn closer throws the same alarm forty times a week, so the queue fills with a door nobody will fix. Six months later the count is in the thousands and the two in the morning entry sits in the middle.

Ask whoever runs your system for last month's forced door and held open events, sorted by door. Two or three doors will account for most of it, and what is left over will be short.

If nobody has pulled that report this year, message the page.

09/02/2026

Nobody walks the stairs. That is most of why the after hours access log on a card system looks clean.

The elevator cab gets a reader because it is visible and easy to explain to a tenant. The stair door on the same floor gets whatever the fire plan required, and on a lot of floors that means re-entry for anyone already in the stairwell. Nothing gets logged, because nothing was badged.

Walk it after six. Take the stairs from the lobby to a floor you have no business on and pull the handle.

If it opens, message the page.

08/25/2026

Once a year every mag-locked door in a building releases at the same moment.

That is the fire alarm test doing what code requires. It is also the one hour anyone can see what a building does under alarm.

Nobody is inside to look. A drill puts everyone in the parking lot counting heads, which is the point of a drill, so the doors go unwatched.

Floor doors off the lobby stand open for the length of the test. So does the door up from the garage.

Send someone back in during the next test with a list of doors to look at. Ten minutes, once a year.

If nobody has walked yours that way, message the page.

08/22/2026

Every building with card readers on the doors also has a brass key that opens the same doors. Fire code and roof access still need one.

That key lives in a lockbox or a desk drawer, and the number of copies made since the building opened is usually unknown. Nobody logs a key the way a card gets logged, so there is no list to pull.

Rekeying a suite after a tenant moves out is a line item somebody has to ask for. It does not happen on its own, and the old tenant's locksmith does not report back.

Count the key cabinet against what is signed out. If those two numbers do not match, message the page.

08/17/2026

A visitor log is a clipboard, and in most Phoenix buildings nobody has ever read one back.

It gets signed on the way in. Nothing checks it against the badge system, and the time out column sits blank on most lines because nobody is responsible for closing the sheet. The binder goes in a drawer when it fills.

There is a ten minute test for this. Ask the front desk for everyone who signed in last Tuesday afternoon. If what comes back is a shrug, the log is decoration and the building has no record of who was inside it.

If that is the answer you get and you are not sure what to do next, message the page.

08/11/2026

Nobody puts a lighting walk on a calendar, and camera coverage degrades with the parking lot lamps.

Cameras get specified against the light level the week a building opens. A pole on the far row fails and a tree fills in over a wall pack. Nothing reports either one, because nothing on the system is watching the lamps. The recording keeps running, and what it holds at two in the morning is a grey shape crossing a grey lot. That is what gets handed to a detective.

This only shows up standing in the lot after dark. It looks fine on a monitor at noon. If nobody has walked yours at night this year, message the page.

08/09/2026

An alarm call list is a few names and phone numbers. In most Phoenix buildings the first two of them left the company years ago and nobody told the monitoring center.

The list gets set up on install day, usually by whoever signed the contract, and then it sits. People change roles and the after hours contact retires without anyone updating it. The alarm still trips at two in the morning and the operator works down a list of people who cannot help.

Pulling the current list takes one phone call. Reading it takes a minute.

If the first name on yours is someone who no longer works there, message the page.

08/07/2026

Your cameras are set to hold thirty days. Pull up the oldest recording on the system and check the date on it, because the real number is usually shorter than anyone thinks.

Retention gets configured the day the system goes in. Then cameras get added, resolution goes up, someone switches from motion recording to continuous, and the drive starts overwriting sooner. Nothing alarms about it. The wall display still looks fine.

You find out when you need footage from three weeks ago and it is not there.

Checking takes a minute and costs nothing.

If the date on that oldest file surprises you, message the page.

08/05/2026

A tenant improvement in an occupied building issues temporary badges to a crew of thirty. The job ends and in most buildings nobody goes back and turns them off.

Credentials cut for a buildout outlive it by months, sometimes years, still tied to trades who finished and left the state. It surfaces only if somebody pulls the access list, and that is not on anyone's calendar.

Most access control systems have an expiration field on the credential and it is usually left blank. Filling it in when the badge is issued costs nothing.

If you have a buildout running in a Phoenix building and nobody owns that credential list, message the page.

08/04/2026

Your badge system knows who came into the building. Your network knows who logged in. In most Phoenix organizations those two logs have never been read side by side.

Someone badges onto a floor they have no business on at 6am, and the same credential pulls a file share an hour later. Either log alone looks ordinary. Together they are an incident.

Reading them side by side takes an afternoon and no new hardware.

If nobody at your organization owns both, message the page and I will walk you through what to ask for.

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