Users invariably like convenient, easy identification. System managers tend to value secure, reliable solutions, especially if transponder and system management can be kept efficient and cost-effective. Lastly, hygienic concerns are now making hands-free identification methods increasingly important wherever access must be controlled without users touching surfaces – like hospitals or other sterile sites.
What kind of identification options now exist for identification and access control?
Cards and tags
The most common access identification used today is presenting a card or tag to a reader. Read distances are rarely more than few centimeters. The most secure technologies protect tags, cards and their transactions from hackers and skimmers with sophisticated encryption. Besides access control, they are frequently found in payment applications. Indeed, a reader at a gym entrance, for example, can serve access and payment simultaneously, using paid visits pre-loaded onto a member’s card.
Pin-code
Combining personal pin codes with a card or tag, is a simple, yet powerful way to increase your security. Programming your readers to require pin codes at select times (e.g. evenings, weekends) can keep your policy acceptably flexible for users, while pin-code-only identification lets you simplify further.
Mobile phone Identification – Idesco Mobile Lite
Smartphones are obvious platforms to host digital credentials. Idesco Mobile Lite users actually create their own credentials when they download and install our app in their phones. Managing these credentials is also easy since they are designed to work transparently in tandem with a system’s traditional transponders. Our Idesco Mobile Lite readers detect and read mobile IDs via user phones’ BLE connectivity – all secured behind highly sophisticated encryption. Transactions can be further secured with pin-codes, passwords, patterns or even their phone’s biometric lock. This makes mobile identification a very cost-effective way to implement biometric level secure identification in a system.
Long range – vehicle ID, factories, hospitals
Long range identification was once commonly associated with vehicle ID applications. An Idesco UHF EPC reader would read a tag affixed to a vehicle’s windshield at distances out to 10 meters. This still saves drivers today the inconvenience of stopping, exiting or otherwise presenting a tag for access. Today, smaller Idesco UHF EPC readers are available to support long range personal access control applications. They reliably read employee tags hanging in badge holders or attached to clothing out to a few meters.
Idesco Mobile Lite also supports long range identification when users’ phones host their identity. A mobile-compatible Idesco reader can transact the phone in the user’s pocket at distances even out 10 meters, if preferred. This creates a remarkably powerful hands-free solution for automatic doors configured with Idesco Mobile Lite security level 1 – a level designed to support hygienic, touchless access.