Backordered Prox Cards: Time to Look at Mobile Credentials?

Supply chain disruptions have caused certain proximity cards and key fobs to be delayed and backordered to as far back as six months. With no inventory available, many organizations are struggling to issue credentials to new employees, visitors, tenants, and members.

This predicament has caused businesses to operate their access control systems in ways that jeopardizes security, including unlocking doors that are typically restricted in order to allow access to authorized personnel who cannot be issued a credential. In other cases, personnel are being reassigned to monitor and control access for main entryways — a difficult thing to do in the middle of a country-wide staffing shortage.

There is another option that does not include increasing risk to an access control system.

Many companies are upgrading existing access control systems to accept virtual ID cards that are loaded onto smartphones, called mobile credentials. Using the secure wireless capabilities of iPhones and Android devices, secured doors and gates can now be controlled via managed devices that nearly everyone already carries around every day.

Mobile access can be implemented as an extension to existing card- or fob-based access control systems, allowing the use of existing credentials and newly enabled mobile devices for access security.

How to make a security system accept mobile credentials could be as simple as finding an authorized integrator like IdentiSys that can offer licenses for existing readers with built-in NFC or Bluetooth capabilities. In some cases, simply swapping out legacy readers for newer — readily available — readers will do the trick.

IdentiSys leverages technology from HID Global, Allegion, Identiv, STid, SafeTrust, Galaxy Control, i-PRO by Panasonic, S2Lenel, and others to provide mobile access control solutions that allow organizations to meet the growing demands of a mobile-first world and rely less on the supply chain status of physical proximity cards and fobs. Contact us today for more information and a quote!