Chris Burton is the executive vice president of experiences and design at Sign In Solutions, a company that provides visitor management + experience solutions to a wide variety of customers in more than 100 countries. A longtime innovator in the visitor management space, Chris focuses on shaping seamless, secure and compliant visitor experiences for companies in a range of industries. Prior to joining Sign In Solutions, he co-founded Sign In App Smart Visitor Management and All Things Code Ltd.
Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
Sign In Solutions is a leading worldwide provider of visitor management solutions for K-12 schools, and universities and colleges. The company gives schools modern safety technology to strengthen security and trust with every school visit, while also creating a positive, welcoming experience for authorized visitors.
Trusted by more than 6,000 schools worldwide, Sign In Solutions is a smart, risk-adaptive platform that brings together real-time visibility into who’s on campus, identity verification, risk screening, compliance automation, visitor management, and powerful analytics into a single, AI-enhanced solution.
Sign In App reduces visitor entrance management time for schools by 80%. Schools are able to easily set up the tool in 30 minutes and can customize the solution to fit their needs.
K-12 districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District and higher education schools like Exeter College use in Sign In Solutions’ technology to mitigate visitor risk and stop threats before they materialize, ensure compliance, and turn visits into opportunities to strengthen security and trust.
The company also works with enterprise businesses, government entities and major manufacturers, as well as small and mid-size companies and organizations.
No other solution has the technologically advanced capabilities to strengthen physical security, support compliance readiness, improve emergency preparedness, and provide a modern, frictionless visitor experience across multiple locations and geographies from one platform.
What is the challenge educators face today that is fixable?
Only 40% of U.S. public schools reported feeling “very prepared” to handle intruders according to a study done by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical center within the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. This comes as many schools are also navigating budget uncertainty in light of potential federal and state cuts, making it difficult to invest in effective safety technology.
Additionally, many universities rely on outdated systems and processes for checking credentials of onsite visitors such as contractors, guest speakers, or maintenance crews — hindering the ability to maintain and improve safety and security strategies.
Most schools have a lot of visitors that are managed by very few office staff using manual systems like paper logbooks. These systems create security blind spots: they can’t be searched during emergencies, cross-referenced for patterns, or audited for compliance. A visitor who was flagged at one campus can easily sign in at another location because there’s no way to share information between manual systems.
Scalable, secure, and affordable solutions can protect staff, students, and visitors, but also provide every visitor with a welcoming, positive experience reflecting the school’s values. Security doesn’t have to feel cold or intimidating but it can be a positive, dignified experience for students, staff and guests.
What is the challenge educators face today that will persist?
On-campus security is a persistent challenge, as new AI-driven threats are proliferating, and as campuses manage greater growth. Every school needs to know who is onsite at any moment to protect its students, staff, visitors, and infrastructure, account for everyone during emergencies, and prevent risks before they materialize.
Yet, resource constraints including limited funding and understaffing will remain persistent challenges across institutions as will the need to control building access, keep threats out, and confidently keep students, staff, and data safe. Security officers, front-office staff, and IT support are often stretched thin, making it difficult to consistently enforce visitor protocols – especially when schools are using manual processes. Manual visitor logs and paper-based processes create systematic vulnerabilities that understaffing only amplifies. Critical information gets lost between shifts, visitor patterns that should raise red flags go unnoticed, and emergency response teams lack real-time data about who’s actually on campus. Additionally, laws and regulatory requirements around student safety, data privacy (e.g., FERPA), and background checks for visitors vary by state, making it a challenge for staff.
What are the areas of education or training and workforce development that are being overlooked?
The most overlooked gap is the disconnect between digital literacy training and physical security operations. Most schools invest heavily in cybersecurity awareness but fail to recognize that visitor management is equally data-driven and requires similar systematic thinking.
Front office staff and security personnel need training on risk pattern recognition, not just protocol compliance. They should understand how visitor behavior data connects to broader safety insights, and how to leverage technology to spot anomalies that manual checking misses.
There’s also a critical need for cross-functional emergency preparedness that integrates visitor management systems with a broader crisis response. Too many schools train for lockdown procedures without ensuring their visitor tracking systems can instantly account for all non-students on campus during an emergency.
Finally, schools need leadership development around strategic technology adoption. Decision-makers often view visitor management as a simple administrative function rather than a foundational safety and operational intelligence platform.
What do you foresee will be a challenge in education in three to five years?
Balancing safety and increasingly complex risks with an open learning environment and AI-driven threats that maintains trust while managing limited budgets will remain a challenge in the next three to five years.
Schools must remain welcoming while implementing stricter visitor management protocols, which can sometimes feel restrictive and obtrusive. School communities want high security but also fast, easy access to their campuses. Universities in particular risk backlash if security feels overly “policing,” which can impact student trust.