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HID Global unveils mobile initiative at ISC West

Top executives — including Daniel Ballin, Director, Strategic Business Development and Innovation; Anthony Ball, President and Managing Director, IAM Solutions; and Rob Haslam, Vice President and Managing Director of the Government ID business — announced several major programs underway at HID that affect everything from mobile ID credentials, citizen IDs, Cloud-based access, policy-based predictive methods and biometrics.

The company announced in 2011 it was using credentials on smart phones to open doors when it conducted a pilot program at Arizona State University using Secure Identity Object (SIO) technology embedded in NFC-enabled devices. Today, it is enabling access to buildings on wearable devices and announced support at ISC West for both Apple Watch and Android Wear.

The company also announced the commercial availability of SDKs (software develop kits) for third-party developers to create their own applications for the technology.

In addition to access-based applications, HID Global is also ramping up secure IDs on smart phone devices, allowing something as integral as a driver’s licence to be carried on a device rather than as a piece of government-issued piece of plastic. As a credential stored on a phone, it could be used to share information only as needed — i.e. verify the age of a person attempting to purchase alcohol as 21 or over. HID’s GoID technology, powered by Seos, can also be applied to other official documents like national ID cards, travel credentials and voter registration cards.

The idea of official identifiers on a smart device is still relatively new, but Haslam said the concept is starting to snowball as more and more governments are showing interest. He anticipates that in the next few years, every region in the world will be participating and have examples of mobile identification.