Given how dependent we’ve all become on our cellphones, it’s likely you don’t forget to take it with you pretty much everywhere you go. It’s also pretty safe to assume that forgetting or misplacing our cellphones happens a whole lot less often than forgetting or misplacing our keys. Always in hand or stored securely in our pockets, cell phones have become a fundamental component of both our personal and professional lives. But tossing the keys down wherever they happen to land, and later forgetting where exactly that was, still remains a common practice.

So it only makes good sense that the demand for mobile access via smartphones has never been higher. AC Technical has deep experience upgrading existing access control systems to include mobile access. Our technology solutions can enable our clients and their users to utilize their mobile devices as either a replacement to – or in-conjunction with – their existing access card technologies. The time has never been better to adapt mobile access as a new way to allow users to enter their premises. Allowing a user’s smartphone to serve as their virtual “key” is not only convenient, this type of mobile access is also cost-efficient and a much simpler method for managing identity credentials. Mobile access, because of the technologies that enable them, are also highly secure.

Among those technologies – Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) – which is a wireless standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices and building personal area networks (PANs). And, Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that makes smartphones, tablets, and other devices even smarter.

Being able to send and receive access credentialing info wirelessly is allowing for increased remote/mobile communication capabilities. With these capabilities, users can monitor their premises remotely and thereby deny or allow access to users and visitors from their smartphones.

Let’s face it – Managing access control and credentialing is not an easy task. Especially when so many users, understandably, lose or forget their key cards, access codes, or fobs. Or worse, share them with unauthorized users or don’t return them when their access privileges have been revoked. Insider threats are on the rise, especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s scary to think that the typical 125khz RFID-enabled card or fob, which is one of the most commonly used credentials out there, can be so easily duplicated to another card in less than a minute using a handheld reader you can buy on the Internet. It’s a sad reality that the retrieved access audit trail history data will translate exactly as if the original clean card was in use.

Add to those burdens the fact that valuable productivity time is often lost by security personnel or management trying to track down missing credentials and the people assigned to them, not to mention time lost deactivating expired users’ credentials and adding new ones to the system to keep it current.

We live in a world where convenience is key. Mobile devices can now serve as that convenient key to safely securely, and affordably grant or deny access to your premises and assets.