Welcome back to CIE's How To AV! You join us at the security event as we launch our brand new series
How to AV: Access All Areas We're going to bring you all the latest products, technologies,
innovations and trends, from the security and access control industry.
Welcome back to CIE's How To AV: Access All Areas. We're on the CIE stand at the security event 2022
found Kevin relaxing at the coffee bar on one of very few quiet moments.
Kevin, thanks for joining us. Great show already! One of the big stories at the show of course
is contactless access control, contactless authentication. What is contactless and why does it matter in this post-covered era?
Obviously post-covid there is a whole reaction against physically touching a product
So again the only real way we can look at is contactless.
It's fair to say that existing technologies like RFID, that is contactless to a degree but you're still going quite close with it
so a lot of new technologies have developed themselves and started to come to the fore now.
There's also a move not just because of Covid, to actually have it
within your smart device so like your mobile which you mentioned but then also your face
"I don't want to carry a card it gets lost" "key's getting missing" - things of that ilk
So it's about the experience that's actually if it's quick and it's easy and the only real way to do that is contactless.
So if we step back to pre-covid and some of the technologies that we were using for access
and we were using for authentication of course the most obvious is a keypad and with regards to biometric
there's a lot of fingerprint access because that is a really secure technology,
but there's been a real move away from that hasn't there?
There has, I think the problem for the biometric for the finger scanner, there's a historic issue
and that is with moisture on the finger it can't read the fingerprint,
so yeah we know fingerprints are highly secure but the problem with the technology is
if you get it dirty, your fingers are dirty, you leave a residential mark actually on the unit
it doesn't read the next person, you're having to clean them, you've got them outside
you've got water running on them, so for certain applications they are very much the ideal technology.
But they have their problems and because of that this is why these new technologies are coming through
so facial recognition, QR coding again is another big element of it.
It's never said that RFID has had its day because it hasn't it's not really taken off in the form of NFC
because Apple don't use NFC apart from Apple Pay but again it's still a limitation of it.
So I think the other element is we need it highly secure, we want something that's biometrically used and therefore
now you're seeing this move towards facial recognition, towards QR coding, because QR coding is far more secure than RFID
So we're already used to of course using a key fob, or using a card for RFID which is contactless in itself, works quite well
but that really requires that physical key that can easily get lost or need sending to new tenants
so there's a lot of management work there to do
therefore there is such a huge crossover and we've seen it throughout the show towards
mobile access and therefore using your smartphone as your key in effect
and then as you've mentioned there are various technologies that we can use on our smartphone.
You talk about QR code and we'll talk about that in a moment, there are various contactless within our phones so
if we talk about NFC and Bluetooth first of all both of which can be found in our smartphone
So what's the difference and why we're using one over the other?
I think that as far as the Bluetooth element of it is it's not Bluetooth in the way that we think of Bluetooth
I guess it's day-to-day use where we're connecting to a hi-fi you know it's a simple pair and it's not that it's not it's
it's quite a specific technology. It's BLE so it's Bluetooth Low Energy
we don't want to drain our phones down but it's how it interacts.
You know 2N have got wave key, it's a fantastic product
the use of it is really neat, it's really easy to use. What sits behind it is very complex
and the way that they utilize the GPRS in the phone they're tracking movement towards a lock
if you're going away from it ignores you if you're moving towards you it's ready to open
and I think that people like that element of it you know I don't have to get a phone out and push
a button on it I can just make it know I'm coming towards the door, not necessarily press the unit
you know we can press our phone and again, you're right, we're used to using you know fingerprinting
our phone now we're used to using facial scanning just to access our phone so we're a lot more used
to using it now so bluetooth's got a real place for it but there are still people that don't
necessarily trust Bluetooth yet and there's always been an argument about facial recognition
And again we go back to the whole issues of people gaining access to VMS's
and things of that ilk, camera hacking, the cyber security element now is obviously the buzzword
that's the thing that everybody wants to know about so Facial (recognition) I think has become a lot more accepted
there was a lot of scepticism about how secure it was but it's where you use it you know you're not going
to use facial recognition if you're going into a missile silo or you're defending the country
but it's perfectly acceptable and highly usable for somebody who's in residential care
who's got dementia who won't remember to carry the key.
So as they've got their face, as long as they present their face
and again it's the experience. If I can register you
send it very easy to you in a secure method you can use a QR code, open a door because you're visiting my apartment
gaining entry to the the lobby, going through the car park barrier
So let's let's talk about QR codes. QR codes is quite an old technology now
it's 12 15 years old and it really didn't have that much engagement pre-covid
and during Covid it had such a resurgence as as we used it for
ordering apps in restaurants and posters and it saw that resurgence and now we're really
starting to see growth of it in the access control market really as a temporary key isn't it
So for our amazon deliveries or for service access that's where it's being used and it allows
the end user or the resident to remotely send a key from their mobile, correct?
Yep that's correct yeah. And you can also generate within the management software
We're seeing it now with QR codes being embossed into the top of delivery notes so the driver
because he's got an invoice for the goods he just shows the QR code and that allows him
into a development into a distribution warehouse there's a big move to unmanned security now
so therefore you've got to have this technology one-in-one out so QR codes are ideal for that.
And I guess when we talk about security and we talk about contactless one of the other things you've
just made me think of is, we'll call it Dual Authentication or Multi-layer Authentication
and that's to emit to match different authentication technologies it is yeah so you
might be using Bluetooth and face recognition or using a keypad and fingerprint control
so making sure that it isn't a simple case of of a key fob or a smartphone that's been stolen
but making sure that there are effectively two keys there in one place at one time.
Contactless technology is absolutely the buzzword here at the security event and is absolutely the
future of access control and door intercoms. If you'd like to find out more, contact the CIE team
click on the link below and we'll tell you all about the way forward for your next project.