AST April 2020 Magazine AST Apr 2020 | Page 19

es, with the additional benefit www.AmericanSecurityToday.com of reducing the tendency for em- ployees to group or cue up when entering their workplace.” What about Cost? Of course we understand that while features and perfor- mance of any technology are drivers for product selection de- cisions, we cannot forget that cost is a factor as well. There is little doubt April that 2019 - costs Edition will 43 come down as the technology be- comes more mature and widely accepted – but for now costs need to be acknowledged and accepted as we consider these options. Are biometrics the only an- swer? There are good arguments to sup- port biometrics. But our research suggests that long range card readers and smartphone access Generally speaking, some of the control will also have a strong latest biometrics technologies place in many security designs such as hand wave and fa- cial recognition readers can cost up to 10 times the cost of simple card readers. Several thousand dollars vs. several hundred dol- lars is a good general cost statement. Fingerprint readers and some other contact-type biometrics might fall in between. Nicholas Raffin, Idemia 19