Features Research
Key secure identity trends for 2015: technology

• Increased innovation: The transition to access control technologies based on open standards has created the opportunity for organizations to move beyond static, proprietary access control architectures to more secure, open and adaptable solutions. Innovation will accelerate in an industry no longer anchored to legacy technology. Interoperability also fosters a development environment in which companies like HID Global can collaborate with partners to embed its technology into many different systems that can all be accessed with the same smart card or smart phone used for opening doors. 
 
• New credential form factors: New credential form factors including mobile devices will offer a more secure and convenient way to open doors and parking gates. A single card or phone can now replace mechanical keys and dedicated one-time password (OTP) solutions for physical and logical access control. With Bluetooth Smart or Near Field Communications (NFC) technology on cards or phones, users can simply “tap in” to gain access to facilities, VPNs, wireless networks and cloud- and web-based applications.  Today’s growing access control ecosystem will provide a seamless user experience and flexibly scale and adapt to deliver growing value.   

• More convenient ways to open doors and gates: Bluetooth Smart combined with gesture technology will enable users to open doors from a distance by rotating a smartphone while approaching a mobile-enabled reader. This will enable many additional future applications. 

• Advances in identity management: Physical and logical access control will merge onto cards and phones, and centralized identity management systems will be used to manage multiple IDs for multiple uses on multiple devices with multiple lifecycles, while also ensuring security and privacy for online transactions.    

• Changing security from a barrier to a guardrail: The industry will continue moving toward a biometric authentication model focused on the user experience. Innovative use cases include “binding” a person to a device such as a key fob with a fingerprint sensor for multi-factor authentication without a reader. Meanwhile, credential delivery and management will grow in importance, using cloud-based solutions into which all entities have been biometrically authenticated.

Selva Selvaratnam is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, HID Global.