R&D Systems Engineer/ Mechanical Engineer Sandia National Laboratories Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
High Security Switches (HSS) are critical security sensor components, known to be simple and reliable alarm sensors. This study investigates a phenomena described as “switch freezing” where an HSS erroneously reports secure despite being in an unsecure physical state. This issue appears to be triggered by unknown causes and can be reset by exposing the sensor to an external magnetic field. A mixed-methods approach was employed to investigate sensor functionality and the phenomena associated with switch freezing in relation to HSS installed on high security doors. This HSS deficiency can cause significant issues with nuclear physical site security if an HSS fails to report a real intrusion attempt. Due to the “frozen” state of the switch, multiple persons could successfully infiltrate a facility without detection until the switch is manually reset. The findings of this study will provide key information for identifying how, when, and why these freezes may occur as well as how to detect conditions which may induce this phenomenon, therefore increasing safeguards and physical security system capabilities.
