Access control · High-end residential & commercial
Secure every door, gate, elevator, and sensitive room on luxury estates and commercial sites with credentials people actually use—biometrics, facial recognition, mobile unlocks, cards, PINs, and visitor workflows—backed by audit trails and live video when staff need to verify an event in real time.
Serving premier Southern California markets — see all service areas →
Keys copy, go missing, and never leave an audit trail. Electronic access control replaces mechanical risk with policy: who can enter, which doors, which hours, and what happens when something is wrong. For estates, studios, and commercial campuses across Southern California, that means fewer master-key problems and faster investigations when something does go wrong.
Nelson Security specifies access as part of a larger security fabric. Door events should not live alone—they should sit next to camera views, facial analytics, intrusion status, and network health so operators (or homeowners) get the full picture without juggling five apps.
When a badge is not enough—or when frictionless entry matters—we design identity at the door the right way.
Fingerprint and multi-factor biometric readers for primary doors, private wings, vaults, and server rooms. Biometrics reduce shared-card risk and give a clear “who opened this door” trail for estates with staff and commercial sites with shift turnover.
Face-based unlock and identity at select entries for frictionless access—paired with privacy-aware camera placement, enrollment controls, and always a secondary credential when needed. Ideal for high-traffic main doors where hands-free entry improves daily living and operations.
Privacy by design: We place biometric and facial solutions only where they earn their keep, document who is enrolled, and align storage and access policies with how the household or organization wants identity handled—not a blanket “scan everyone” approach.
From a single man-door to multi-building sites with security operations staff.
Biometrics, facial recognition, mobile credentials, NFC badges, cards/fobs, PIN, QR visitor passes, and touchless unlock options matched to risk and lifestyle.
Readers, controllers, electric strikes/maglocks, wireless locks, parking gates, and elevator floor control—engineered for reliability and code-aware egress.
Temporary credentials, host workflows, lobby check-in, and clear revoke paths so guests never become permanent keys—while residents keep biometric or face unlock.
Add or revoke users from anywhere, schedule holidays, push lockdowns, and manage multi-site policies without a truck roll for every change.
Open a door event and see the matching camera instantly—critical for properties with guards, reception, or after-hours monitoring, including face search on supported platforms.
Local decision-making where needed so doors keep authenticating during network disruption, with encrypted communications and clean failover paths.
Independent design—matched to risk, staffing, and IT preferences.
When you need polished mobile experience, visitor programs, biometrics, and tight coupling to enterprise video and facial analytics, we deploy enterprise access platforms suited to multi-door and multi-site operations. Ideal where security staff verify doors against live video and need searchable identity context across the property.
For organizations standardizing on a unified networking and physical security ecosystem, we design access hubs and readers that live next to cameras with AI face workflows, intercoms, sensors, and PoE switching—one operational model for IT and facilities.
Also in the mix: Assa Abloy and related locking hardware, biometric readers, intercoms, and legacy migrations. We upgrade credentials and controllers without forcing a full door hardware rip-out when the mechanical package is still solid. Nelson Security can specify ballistic-material safe rooms as additional residential hardening.
Main house, guest houses, garages, gyms, and perimeter gates with family, staff, and vendor schedules that stay clean.
Production spaces, server rooms, HR corridors, and parking—policies that match shift work and contractor turnover.
One policy language across locations with local autonomy where needed and centralized revoke for offboarding.
Designed from the dirt up—not a pile of apps.
Project
The lot was stripped down to dirt in 2017, a year after design and engineering began — because on a project like this, the plan has to exist before the slab does. Most of the wiring runs the way it does in any build, through walls and attics, but Nelson Security also ran conduit under the slab to multiple key locations throughout the house, deliberately over-building capacity so more wire could be pulled later with minimal disruption. Between the basement equipment room and a key junction on the main floor, for example, four 2-inch conduit runs covered what the initial build needed; four more went in for whatever would come later. That "later" is now, and all eight runs are in use.
That discipline paid off before the family had even finished settling in. The lower level sits under a hillside with 24 inches of concrete overhead, below, and to the side — enough to swallow a cell signal whole. Once the owners moved in and found dead spots in that part of the house, the crew pulled a new run through conduit that was already in place and added a multi-zone cell repeater, without opening a single wall. The five-year runway between the first drawing and the final walkthrough in 2021 is exactly what made that possible.
Coordinating with the other trades mattered just as much as the plan itself — a house this size has a finite amount of ceiling and wall cavity, and every trade wants a piece of it. The window treatments were the sharpest example: dual shades on every window, with shade boxes that had to sit flush with the ceiling. That meant custom framing at every opening, and no two openings were quite alike — some shades sat side by side, some stacked, some were surface-mounted where a pocket wasn't an option.
Four racks in a 400-square-foot equipment room hold the network gear, AV switching, control processors, video servers, and battery backups that keep the system running. The backbone underneath the house is a fiber core running Cat6A and Cat7 out to 20 wireless access points and 10 PoE switches, feeding more than 300 network drops — over 10 miles of wire across every low-voltage system combined. On a normal day the network carries at least 175 connected devices, with the owners streaming across multiple devices at once — the kind of load that makes a properly built backbone the difference between a system that feels invisible and one that stutters.
Crestron sits at the center of daily life — 18 touch panels placed throughout the house handle lighting, shades, eight video zones and 24 audio zones of whole-home AV, camera viewing, and the Jandy pool and spa, including temperature and lighting. A video doorbell pops up on every panel with a notification tone and live two-way video. With more than 150 switches and over 300 lighting loads in the house, the owners rely on summary pages that show at a glance what's on and where, rather than walking room to room to check. The same logic runs security: all 200-plus alarm zones report to summary pages on the panels, so a door or window left open shows up immediately without a walk-through. Shades and lighting run on separate weekday, weekend, holiday, and holiday-with-guests schedules, tuned to how the family actually lives rather than a single default. Klipsch speakers cover the bedrooms, corridors, and media room, with Sonos bars in rooms that don't need full surround, and every AV zone has a programmable remote so one handset reaches every source. The media room runs a 100-inch Sony display with 9.1 surround. Outside, an outdoor TV and speakers across the grounds cover entertaining, and guests can stream straight from their phones or pull from the media server in the equipment room.
Security runs on Avigilon — more than 30 cameras and access control at multiple doors — paired with a Bosch alarm on every opening and custom scheduling that arms the system without the owners having to think about it. Additional hardening for the residents has also been implemented. A UniFi network carries Wi-Fi 7 to the edge of the property, and Grandstream video phones round out communications throughout the house.
None of it was a one-and-done install. Nelson Security has kept the house on a service contract since 2021 — firmware updates across every system, physical maintenance like cleaning and adjusting the cameras, and retuning schedules and scenes as the family's routines change. On a system this size, the way people actually live in it never quite matches the plan on day one, and the value is in catching that before it becomes a complaint.
Keys copy, go missing, and never leave an audit trail. We replace mechanical risk with policy: who can enter which doors, gates, elevators, and rooms, and when. Family, staff, and vendors get credentials and schedules that can be revoked without rekeying the property. Request a consultation — by appointment from our Thousand Oaks base for residential and commercial sites across Southern California priority markets.
When a badge is not enough—or when frictionless entry matters at a primary door. Fingerprint and multi-factor biometric readers suit private wings, vaults, and server rooms. Facial unlock is for designated high-traffic entries, with enrollment control, a fallback credential, and privacy-aware placement. We do not enroll everyone by default.
Yes—and that is how we specify access. Door events sit next to camera views, facial analytics, and intrusion status so operators or homeowners can verify forced doors, tailgating, or after-hours entries in seconds. Architecture-first design means one security fabric, not five apps.
Cloud-native platforms excel at multi-site management and mobile credentials. On-premise or hybrid fits local decision-making, air-gapped options, or deep coupling to enterprise video. We recommend from door count, IT policy, and who will administer the system day to day—not a one-size model.
Often yes. We upgrade credentials and controllers without forcing a full hardware rip-out when the mechanical package is still solid. Readers, electric strikes, maglocks, wireless locks, parking gates, and elevator floor control are engineered for reliability and code-aware egress.
Yes. Temporary credentials, host workflows, and lobby check-in keep guests from becoming permanent keys. Multi-site organizations get one policy language with local autonomy where needed and centralized revoke for offboarding. We design this for studios, campuses, and estates across Southern California.
High-end residential and commercial projects across Southern California.
Luxury residential & commercial access
By appointment only · Premier Southern California markets