BMS Boundary Assessment

That building management system was installed the day the vendor showed up. The boundaries around it were never discussed – so there aren’t any.

Your building systems were installed without anyone defining where they should live on your network – and most of them have been crossing that line ever since. ProtectMyIT’s BMS Boundary Assessment™ identifies every encroachment, documents the risk it creates, and shows exactly where the separation should have been from day one.

It’s the first step in restoring the boundaries your building depends on but was never given.

The BMS Problem Nobody Specifies

When a BMS vendor installs a new access control panel, an elevator controller, or an HVAC automation system, they install it the way they always do: connected to whatever network is already there. Unless someone on your side explicitly says “put this on an isolated subnet,” it goes straight onto your primary network – the same one running your leasing platform, your financial systems, and everything else in the building.

This isn’t negligence on the vendor’s part. It’s simply what happens by default when nobody draws the line. In property terms, it’s an encroachment – a structure crossing a boundary it never had the right to cross, not because anyone meant harm, but because no one checked where the boundary was before building.

And it doesn’t stop at installation. Once that system is in place, it tends to stay exactly as installed – unreviewed, unsegmented, unquestioned – for the life of the building. What starts as a boundary crossing becomes a holdover: access and placement that should have been corrected long ago, still sitting there because nobody’s gone back to look.

Two BMS Challenges, One Root Cause

  • Encroachment – the *spatial* failure. The system was placed across a network boundary it should never have crossed, because the boundary was never specified.
  • Holdover – the *temporal* failure. The encroachment was never corrected, and the access behind it was never reviewed, revoked, or re-scoped as vendors, contracts, and technicians changed over time.

Every BMS install starts as a potential encroachment. Left unaddressed, it becomes a holdover – and both are exactly the kind of finding that surfaces, badly, during a lender review, an insurance renewal, or a transaction.

What a BMS Boundary Assessment includes:

BMS Boundary Survey™

A full inventory of every building management system – HVAC, elevators, access control, lighting automation – and exactly where it sits on your network today: what it’s connected to, what it can reach, and whether it’s segmented from the systems it has no business touching.

BMS Encroachment Report™

Clear documentation of every system installed across a boundary it shouldn’t have crossed — the access-control panel on the main network, the HVAC controller reachable from anywhere a vendor happens to log in — written the way a property survey documents a fence over the line: what was found, where, and what it puts at risk.

BMS Holdover Clearance™

The recurring service that keeps boundaries enforced over time: reviewing vendor access on a standing schedule, correcting segmentation as systems and vendors change, and closing off access that’s outlived the reason it was granted – so an encroachment found once doesn’t quietly become permanent.

Why This Belongs Next to Everything Else You Already Manage

A BMS system with no network segmentation means “who can adjust the elevator controls” and “who can reach tenant financial data” can end up being the same answer. It’s precisely the kind of gap that turns a vendor relationship into your largest point of exposure – and precisely the kind of thing a buyer’s diligence team, a lender, or a cyber insurer is increasingly likely to ask about, whether or not you’ve looked yet.

A BMS Boundary Assessment finds it first, draws the line that should have existed from day one, and keeps it enforced — before someone else finds it for you.

Every building has boundaries on the title survey. Does yours have them on the network?

Let’s talk about what your firm needs

A quick conversation is the easiest way to understand where your biggest risks are – and how we can help safeguard your business from financial and operational disruption.