"Deeper integration of access control technologies
will contribute to business success"
rolling project to upgrade access
control has been ongoing for many
years. More than 500 wireless,
battery-powered door devices are
now deployed at seven separate
Inholland campuses. All Inholland's
electronic locking devices are inte-
grated with the university's central
access system. With a single cre-
dential, users unlock all authorised
openings managed by the system,
whether wired or wire-free doors.
Russell Wagstaff says: "Choos-
ing wireless technology saved the
university more than just time.
A recent in-house benchmarking
study found installer labour costs
are over 80 per cent lower for
wireless versus wired locks. The
operating cost of running battery-
powered wireless locks is also
much lower than for equivalent
wired locks, which rely on mains
electricity."
Which standards,
which platforms?
According to Russell Wagstaff, the
easiest, most cost-effective path to
hardware integration is with prod-
ucts developed to agreed stand-
ards. Integration-ready standards
future-proof any large investment
in access control and most in-
vestments in security are large.
In the vast global security
ecosystem, multiple standards play
an important role. They demand
cooperation at the top, in an indus-
try that also thrives on competi-
tion. The Open Supervised Device
Protocol (OSDP) is deployed across
the access industry, including by
HID Global. Suited to higher-
security applications, including in
government, the OSDP supports
AES-128 encryption, bi-directional
communications and biometric
smartcards. Again, interoperabil-
ity is at the heart of the OSDP's
mission.
Another, newer access control
standard is also making an impact,
Russell Wagstaff stresses. When
asked to assess whether locks
should support the OSS Standard
Offline (OSSSO), a majority of
professionals polled for the 2018
edition of the Wireless Access
Control Report judged it was "very
important" (58 per cent). Again,
flexibility and future-proofing
were mentioned. A huge majority
(91 per cent) considered it at least
"somewhat important".
With the OSSSO, offline
locks from different manufacturers
read access rights from a card and
interpret them in the same way.
It is possible to bake this standard
into firmware for an entire product
line: If the firmware already com-
plies with the standard, compatible
systems support it already, with no
additional integration workload for
new products.
"Customers see huge benefits
of an open standard like the OSS
Standard Offline. Open platform
development dramatically cuts
a customer's dependence on a
single supplier, leaving them free
to choose the best device for the
job. Open standards offer more
frequent opportunities to tender
projects, because you are freed from
compatibility concerns. Ultimately,
that can be a significant cost ad-
vantage," said Frederik Hamburg,
Chairman of the Open Standards
Security Association.
Software integration for
comprehensive building
control
There is another path to access
control integration: via software.
Security software can extend the
reach or capability of access con-
trol just as powerfully as hardware.
Russell Wagstaff says: "To
achieve this, access control software
can be "plugged in" directly to an
existing building or security man-
agement platform, making wired
or wire-free electronic doors one
node in a larger building control
panel. Administrators continue to
issue, amend or cancel credentials,
including with fine-grained access
rules, without leaving their familiar
interface."
As buildings are tasked with
getting smarter, this exchange of
data between integrated systems
becomes ever more important.
According to one Omdia analyst:
"Access control integration is es-
sential to unlocking the potential
of higher-level BMS (Building
Management System) platform
functionality. As more BMS solu-
tions move towards command-and-
control-style features, which allow
buildings to adjust building man-
agement subsystems to respond to
individual occupants' actions, the
need for access-control integration
grows exponentially".
Access control becomes
the business software hub
Alternatively, the access control
platform itself can expand to man-
age multiple business processes
HR, support ticketing, financial
reporting and more alongside daily
access control tasks, for instance.
Running multiple systems may
create double or triple the work.
This can quickly eat into a staff
training budget. Duplicating data
entry also increases the chance of
errors. Boosting the capability of
access management software can
transform it into the organisation's
"one hub for everything", hosted
locally or accessed via a reliable
Software as a Service (SaaS) pro-
vider, Assa Abloy stresses.
Access control providers,
including Assa Abloy Opening
Solutions, increasingly focus on
software to improve the power and
performance of their systems. The
data locked inside an access system
can help contribute to achieving
business goals such as cost savings,
improving energy efficiency or
meeting sustainability targets.
Better, more integrated software
streamlines decision-making,
informing it with data drawn from
the security system. It also frees
security managers from their desk
if such data can be made available
inside convenient mobile tools. Tai-
lored reporting, smart visualisation
and customisable dashboards help
security managers generate valuable
insights and then share them with
decision-makers and stakeholders
around the business.
It unlocks the data that an
access system generates every hour
of every day. This can be a critical
resource and a competitive edge in
the hunt for improved profitabil-
ity. It is also freely available. How-
ever, integration is approached,
when done effectively it helps
customers to broaden their access
control capability, administer
locking more efficiently, and better
protect all kinds of premises from
increasingly sophisticated threats.
Deep integration of access control
technologies extends a security
manager's capabilities powerfully,
but almost totally out of sight.
For either a hardware or software-
led approach, this is the goal of
successful integration", Russell
Wagstaff concludes.
d e t e k t o r i n t e r n a t i o n a l · 3 1
Russell Wagstaff, Global Platforms
Director Assa Abloy Opening Solutions
EMEA: