There's a growing need for contactless access authentication in the post covid new normal
HowToAV.tv talks to Matt Raban from 2N about the latest in contactless authentication.
Welcome back to HowToAV.tv today we're joined by Matt Raban from 2N
technologies - Hi - to talk about the latest trend in contactless authentication methods
for door entry and access control. Matt before we talk about the contactless part, let's talk
about authentication methods. What do we mean by that? Okay well you know, looking back from a
long time ago really your key was your first way of authorising access through a door, that sort
of thing really and laterally that's moved on to things like RFID or keypads and things like that.
We had a big movement towards biometrics probably about eight to ten years ago, but now the latest
technology is leaning more towards Bluetooth technologies. So let's talk about the growth in
content. Listen there has been a great big growth since covid of course and in this 'new normal'
we're seeing a real trend towards contactless pathways sometimes called frictionless pathways
and there's a lot of architects and building designers designing this in to the technology
they're building. So why is contactless so important? I think it's the better way of
minimising contact points, so essentially you're not spreading or helping covid make its rounds to
different places. So it's a way of thinking about the best way of how you can get somebody from home
to their office or even from our office back to home essentially without touching and cross
contaminating in any way. And it isn't just about covid because contactless has been around for
quite a long time and it has been used for access control, if we think about id cards which is RFID
for instance it has been around for a long time. But now there's a growing number of technologies
and functionality of that contactless. So what are the benefits of contactless? There is more
than just those hot touch points. We've got things like reduced physical keys so we don't need to
have keys anymore. The way that it's distributed as well - you mentioned earlier on - you were
talking about our mobile phone, if you like becoming the swiss army knife for technology.
So what are those conveniences that we've got from content like essentially going back to your
phone is your main method of going through that door, you know everybody's carrying a smartphone
with them nowadays. So there are a number of different contactless methods that we can use for
authentication. If we talk about authentication probably the simplest is the pin code and a
keypad. Let's talk about the first one, one of the most traditional if you like that we're used to a
card or a key fob will be RFID. Well RFID it comes essentially into different flavours you get a 125
version, you get a 13.56. Essentially nowadays things like 13.56 is much more secure,
you can get secure card versions where it's reading more information on the card
as opposed to the 125 where it might be reading a certain serial number. So the funny thing is with
RFID you're right it has been contactless for such a long time, but because people
generally have used these reasons by touching the rear of the car they probably haven't noticed
but it's literally if you went near it and hovered away without touching it certainly read that card
and of course RFID requires either a card or a key fob. So it effectively is a different type of key
distribution. However the next one NFC which is a development of RFID technology is something that
can be found in our mobile phones of course which changes things completely. So yeah near field
communication or NFC essentially was developed more so for payments on phones and things like
that. Again a technology we've been very used to over the last sort of five years but we're pretty
much all using it nowadays. It's essentially a more modern day of copying a card onto a phone
and then relaying that information from that phone to a particular reader. Then another technology
that's linked to our smartphones is Bluetooth - much much stronger technology there. So BLE
or Bluetooth so much more secure, much lower in its drain of power for your devices and much more
easier device to use. We should also talk about why access via smartphone is so important. Yes
we've all got a smartphone, it reduces the number of physical keys that we have to use
but, also the way that it's administrated is so much easier. As well there's no physical
keys to have to post out and to collect or to lose and also the accounts can be managed so
much easier. Yeah I mean essentially with things like visitor management and things like that,
it just makes the whole process a hell of a lot easier. Cards can be quite expensive as can be
fobs, they do get lent out as well which I always kind of find rather amusing and you know in winter
time maybe some people choose to clear their car windscreens with these and their RFID cards
and things. So it is quite a tricky one - but essentially you know if you're in an office you're
less likely to lend somebody your mobile phone than you are your access card. So the next one
on our list is a technology that's been around for years but it's only just started really being seen
as the right technology to use as contactless which is QR codes. Now QR codes it's similar
to a barcode but it's got more data held to it and now it's being adopted as a temporary key for some
access control system. It's an interesting concept really because QR code scanning was all about
making a group of information appear as a picture, like you say a bit like a barcode
it's a technology that's been around for probably 10 years or so now. It's evolving more and we're
seeing it really being used as a temporary key application. So for parcel deliveries
or for service staff into buildings, it allows the user again to use their mobile phone
using the app that's linked to the access control to generate a one-off QR code key which can have
either limited uses or limited time periods and they can just send that straight through to
the delivery guy or to the service contract company and they can use that and scan that QR
code and gives them access either once or within just a short period of time. Absolutely. Right
next one on our list we're now moving towards biometric technologies. Biometric gives us a much
greater level of security and the one that I guess we're most used to at the moment is fingerprint
readers. Absolutely, there's various ways of biometrics like you say it's using different parts
of your body from iris to face recognition to even you know vein analysis in the back of your back of
your hand the most popular one has been the fringy brain technology again it's something very tricky
to get right because you get a lot of variation in sort of like people's hands moisture levels if
they've cut themselves dirty hands gloves all that sort of thing so it can be quite tricky to do.
Potentially there's been a reduced popularity of fingerprint readers because of contactless
core very much so you know essentially unless you want to be wiping down that reader every
single time that you're using it the the sort of trend now is very much moved back to contactless
technologies. And if we're talking biometrics and we're talking contactless
face recognition is seeing a huge growth in the market isn't it? It has done, again you know
there are various things to be careful of there and the way security levels I mean looking back
to sort of like that fingerprint reader again you said even with Bluetooth technologies if you're
using a phone you're using a personal biometric reader I suppose in a way what's in your pocket
which certainly stops any cross-contamination with a double layer of security. So again
mix and match of different technologies to give you what you need and of course
anybody in security will know it's all about the only approach you know laser security
layers of things to go through to essentially gain access and I think that's key. I was reading your
mind and Matt as you were talking about thinking about the technologies we're talking about now and
the fact that they're all integrated into our smartphones already. So when we talk
about fingerprint scanners and we talk about face recognition, it's pretty much the same technology
that we're all using on our smartphones isn't it? Another biometric is iris recognition which is
really taking security to another level isn't it. It is but it can be a very taboo subject
I mean again iris recognition was one of the first technologies to come out on the biometric side,
but essentially people really don't like pointing things like cameras or other sensing technologies
things like that near people's eyes. It's something that's not very popular - things like
wearing glasses can affect us as well. Not one for the mobile phone finally let's include AMPR,
good old automatic number plate recognition or license plate if you're American of course. So
again you know very fashionable sort of 10-12 years ago reading plates obviously there's lots
of different plates around in the world especially with having different people visit places,
so things like HDBS can be quite tricky sometimes with different registration plates. But again it's
another technology where you probably use the speed of the reed for a double like a double
authentication to make sure that person does need to gain access. Look it's very easy to go and get
yourself a set of show plates off the internet nowadays as opposed to going down to your local
garage and having to provide you documentation to do so. So it's nice to mix that technology with
certain things. A few years ago there were some ideas from some camera manufacturers where they'd
have a logo somewhere actually in the vehicle as well like a sticker where it actually read
the registration plate and then actively look for that sticker to gain access or not. What can
be very useful with AMPR is it's very useful for keeping known vehicles in a kind of a covert kind
of way away from certain pinch points or certain locations even shopping centres if they're known
to be trouble causes or somebody without you know good intentions really. And then finally something
that you have touched on these authentication methods don't have to be used individually.
We've got effectively multi-format or multi-layer authentication and a lot of access control now.
Well essentially you're mixing like I said the different technologies you're taking strengths
from one to combat weaknesses to the other and things like that. But a prime example of that is
you know the passwords or codes that were asked to access various things in your computer nowadays is
you know very normal for somebody to be you know up against lowercase special character
and some sort of number on there. So the number of authentication methods in access control continues
to increase the trend for contactless is increasing and the level of security
will only ever get higher. Join us again soon at HowToAV.tv as we talk everything AV and most
recently within access control and security. Matt thank you for joining us. Thanks for having us.