EXPERT SPEAK
Wisam Yaghmour is
Regional Sales Director
MEA, Physical Access
Control at HID Global
Five steps to securing office access
with mobiles
W
ithin the Middle East,
organisations have already
seen the value of secure
access solutions. In a recent Middle East
focused survey, 52% of the respondents
said they have already deployed basic
secure access solutions. Additionally, 50%
of the respondents said their organisations
were planning to upgrade access control
solutions within the next 12 months.
Globally, mobile access control has
emerged as the next form of secure
access, with regards to entering
premises. The Middle East is ready
for this form of convenient and secure
access, since 34% of the survey’s
respondents highlighted that they
wanted mobile access when it was time
to upgrade their access control solution.
Technologically, the world is geared
to rapidly support this trend, 34% of the
world’s population have a smartphone
device today. In addition, as wearables
become viable for mobile access, IDC
predicts that smart wearables capable
of running third-party applications will
grow 84% between 2014 and 2019.
The key to implementing a mobile
access solution within an organisation
lies in the five steps outlined below:
1
Audit your building control system
It is vital to assess your building’s
current physical access control
infrastructure to determine the
requirement for moving to mobile. Is
your organisation ready to deploy a
mobile access control solution? If not,
Next technology
step after card based
building access
management is
mobile access control
what steps do you need to take to make
it mobile-ready?
If you have already invested in
physical access control, such as entry
cards or tokens, the objective should not
be to simply substitute one credential
form for another. While mobile access
control may replace cards or badges in
some cases, in many other environments
it makes more sense if phones
supplement cards to develop a secure
and convenient experience.
An important question to consider
is functionality - namely, are your
current access control readers able to
support mobile access? It is important
to assess each reader’s requirements,
whether it demands long-range control,
for car park entrances or other outside
buildings, or short-range authentication
capabilities.
It is key to be able to leverage mobile
solutions to combine security and
convenience in unified access control
scenarios, including secure access to
doors, data and cloud services.
2
Which mobile devices need to be
supported
The next step is to think about which
devices you need to support, to ensure
your employees can make the most of
mobile access. By analysing your mobile
user base, you can understand how a
new mobile access control solution will
work best for them.
You should also consider how many
users will need to use the mobile access
solution? What areas of the environment
would benefit most from mobile access
like car parking or main entrance? What
different roles and access rights need to
be assigned and managed?
3
Considerations vary by business
If you allow staff to bring their own
devices, or if you provide them with one,
this will affect the range of technologies
that your solution needs to support.
Upgrade your on-site hardware to match
your mobile access requirements.
Once you have completed auditing
the technology required, you can plan
for the installation of new hardware, or
the upgrading of previous readers. If
readers need to be replaced, make sure
the new devices are mobile-ready for
access control, even if you do not use
this function at the moment. This will
ensure your investment is safe for the
long term.
Parking garages, main entrance doors
and elevators can all benefit from long
read range reader terminals, such as
those supported by Bluetooth Smart.
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