The overlooked security risks around campus research buildings and laboratories

Campus security conversations often focus on the places where students gather most visibly: residence halls, student centers, athletic venues, libraries, parking areas, and public event spaces. Research buildings and laboratories may receive less attention, even though they can present a distinct combination of people, assets, activities, and access requirements.

These facilities may contain high-value equipment, proprietary research, confidential data, controlled environments, specialized materials, or animal research areas. They also bring together faculty, staff, students, postdoctoral researchers, visiting scholars, contractors, vendors, and couriers. When security planning treats them like conventional academic buildings, important vulnerabilities can remain hidden.

Why campus research buildings create a different security challenge

Campus research building security must balance academic openness with carefully controlled access. A single facility may include classrooms, faculty offices, public collaboration areas, restricted laboratories, equipment rooms, loading zones, and specialized storage.

The building perimeter is only one layer. Security teams also need to understand who should enter each internal zone, when access is appropriate, and how people and materials move between areas. A credential that opens the main entrance should not necessarily open every floor, laboratory, or storage room.

This is why research facilities should be included in a broader higher education security strategy, rather than managed as isolated departmental spaces.

Where overlooked laboratory security risks develop

Many vulnerabilities emerge gradually as research activity, personnel, and facilities change.

1. Access permissions that outlast an academic role: 
   Research communities change throughout the year. Students graduate, visiting scholars leave, employees transfer, grants end, and contractors complete projects. Without a defined review process, credentials can remain active or provide broader access than a person's current responsibilities require.
2. Open campus culture and restricted research zones: 
   Universities are designed to support movement, collaboration, and community engagement. That openness can become a challenge when research spaces connect to classrooms, clinics, museums, parking structures, or public corridors. Tailgating, propped doors, unclear wayfinding, and inconsistent visitor escorts can weaken boundaries that appear secure on paper.
3. Deliveries and service entrances outside the public view: 
   Laboratories depend on regular shipments of equipment, specimens, supplies, and temperature-sensitive materials. Loading docks and service corridors may receive less attention than main entrances, even though they can provide direct routes into sensitive areas. Verification, handoff, storage, and escort procedures need to reflect what is being delivered and where it is going.
4. After-hours and lone-worker activity: 
   Experiments, maintenance, custodial work, and time-sensitive research do not always follow the academic schedule. Reduced occupancy can leave researchers isolated and make unusual behavior more difficult to distinguish from legitimate activity. Patrol coverage, check-in procedures, duress communications, and emergency response should reflect how each building operates at night, on weekends, and during campus breaks.
5. Security planning divided across departments: 
   Responsibility for research risk may be shared among campus public safety, environmental health and safety, facilities, information technology, emergency management, and individual academic departments. If these groups plan separately, gaps can appear in incident reporting, access decisions, communications, and emergency response.

Why research building security affects the wider institution

An incident inside a laboratory may have consequences beyond the room where it begins. Unauthorized access, theft, tampering, a utility failure, or a poorly coordinated evacuation can interrupt research, damage equipment, affect sensitive materials, delay grant-funded work, or create reputational concerns.

The broader lesson is that university laboratory security is not only about preventing deliberate harm. It also protects research continuity, institutional trust, and the university's academic mission.

How campuses can bring hidden risks into view

Higher education leaders can begin by examining how people, materials, information, and emergency decisions move through each research facility. A practical security review should consider:

• Role-based access and a recurring credential review process
• Visitor, contractor, vendor, and courier verification
• Security coverage for loading areas, service corridors, and connected buildings
• After-hours staffing, patrols, check-ins, duress communications, and response times
• Coordination among public safety, laboratory leadership, facilities, information technology, and environmental health and safety
• Scenario-based exercises for unauthorized access, theft, protest activity, evacuation, and operational disruption

The goal is not to restrict the collaboration that makes university research possible. It is to create layered controls that match each facility's actual risk, support appropriate movement, and give campus teams a shared response framework.

Make research facilities part of the campus security strategy

Research buildings and laboratories are central to discovery, education, and institutional reputation. Their security needs should not be overshadowed by more visible areas of campus. A focused risk assessment can reveal where access, coverage, and coordination no longer match day-to-day operations.

Ready to identify overlooked vulnerabilities across your research facilities? 

Talk to a GardaWorld Security campus security expert about a strategy designed around your institution, research environment, and campus community. 

Speak with a campus security expert