Security is a major concern for many businesses, and with a wide range of access control options available, it can be difficult to know the best way to secure your business. Access control systems using smart cards are now standard in many businesses, but as technology advances, new products such as HID Mobile Access could be the innovative solution to your business's security concerns, offering you total and instant control over access to your premises.
What are access control systems?
On a rudimentary level, access control systems allow a business’s administrator to have complete and total control over who is able to enter a location within the business and when they are able to do so. Whether a regular employee, contractor or guest needs access to an area within your business, a robust access control system allows a specific set of administrator-defined rules for each and every individual added to the system.
As technological advancements storm ahead, the type of access control systems available to businesses continues to improve. And – whilst smart access cards remain one of the most popular methods to control access within a business – innovative and exciting progress within the field now allows access to be controlled using something everyone carries in their pocket each and every day: a mobile phone or smart device, such as a watch.
What is mobile access control?
Simply put, mobile access control gives businesses all of the control of smart access cards with none of the hassle. In fact, mobile access control grants a business more flexibility and increased control over who is able to access locations and when… All with none of the plastic associated with smart access cards. Instead, access is granted and tracked using an individual’s mobile phone.
While many of the benefits of smart access cards are also applicable to mobile access systems, these new and innovative mobile access control systems offer their own unique and additional set of benefits above and beyond those of more traditional access control solutions.
What are the benefits of mobile access control systems?
1. Negate security vulnerabilities with the latest technology
As is the case with any ageing technology, more traditional access control systems are open to an increasing number of vulnerabilities; conversely, the technology that forms the basis of mobile access control becomes increasingly secure. Benefitting from the constant advancements of mobile phone technology, mobile access control systems inherently hold many of the benefits that accompany mobile phone hardware, software and applications.
Whilst access cards are highly secure, they do have their vulnerabilities. Access cards can easily be lost or misplaced, incurring replacement costs, and as technology moves forward older card technologies become more vulnerable to security breaches. Cards can also be more easily taken from someone and used fraudulently. Mobile access control negates these issues. The latest mobile devices benefit from regular software and application updates ensuring security, they are protected with secure authentication (passwords & biometric security) and are much less likely to be misplaced.
Provided using existing hardware, mobile access controls benefit from the continual updates and patches that come with mobile phone technology, ensuring that your access system is always working, fully secure and up to date.
2. Reliable and convenient for users and administrators
While secure access cards offer a functional solution to access control management, switching to mobile access control offers an added level of reliability and convenience by being contained within something every individual carries with them every day: their mobile phone. While it is easy to forget (or even to lose) a secure access key card, an individual is considerably less likely to lose or forget their mobile phone when attending their workplace. By integrating such an essential part of daily business life into a crucial piece of equipment people carry with them every day, both reliability and convenience are increased exponentially.
The use of mobile access control is not only convenient for the individual using the controls to access their workplace: there is also an additional layer of ease and convenience for system administrators. The innovative technology used within mobile access control systems streamlines the process of creating, updating and managing a user’s access control privileges.
This process enables remote user access management, allowing the entire process to be conducted without the individual user having to be present, and negating the need for a user to collect a secure access card from the system administrator. This also has the additional benefit of allowing changes to be made and take effect immediately; allowing an administrator to change the permissions granted to an individual without that person needing to be present.
3. Cost-effective and sustainable:
The cost of issuing, and reissuing, secure access cards can easily add up even for small and medium-sized businesses. Not only is there the initial outlay for the card itself, but there is also an additional time cost involved in this process. By changing to mobile access controls, not only is the hardware already issued and readily available to the individual, but the ability for remote access management saves both the individual and the administrator valuable time within the business day.
The security of your business is essential to its long-term success. A mobile access control solution such as HID Mobile Access offers a truly modern solution to traditional security concerns, while improving the user experience across the breadth of your business; from the administrators of the system, through to staff and visitors to your business. Make an impression from the very first swipe with a mobile access control system from Universal Smart Cards.