25 years of access control advances

Feb 1, 1998 12:00 PM, STAN WAND

If the pace and rate of change in the recent past is an indication of things to come, advances in access control will continue to accelerate.

Access control systems have been marketed for approximately 25 years. Prior to the early 1970s, the burglar alarm industry was maturing, but there was no access control industry as such. The two products most commonly used were digital electronic locks and early versions of barium ferrite cards. These forerunners of today's sophisticated product offerings dominated the field.

Advances in access control technology accelerated in the late '80s and '90s. Anyone who remembers Future Shock, the best-selling book by Alvin Toffler, cannot be surprised by that rapid growth. To paraphrase Toffler's prediction, advances in science and technology will further fuel and accelerate more advances in technology, and we will experience a snowballing of rapid change, innovation and advancement.

Following is a review of the major changes to access control hardware and software over the past two decades.

Chip technologies Without a doubt, the most significant change in the access control industry occurred shortly after the first lower-priced microprocessor and memory chips became commercially available. As prices gradually fell, manufacturers jumped on the opportunity to create effective systems that could monitor card readers, door sensor switches and control relays. Low-priced memory chips allowed systems to maintain a cardholder database of thousands of cards. That may seem simple in today's high-tech environment, but prior to the mid 1970s, some systems kept track of cards by allowing all cards "valid access" status except those that were individually blocked or voided using elaborate, expensive printed circuit boards populated with dozens of dial switches.

Other variations of the void card module consisted of printed circuit boards that required small jumper wires to be inserted in order to configure the card numbers on the board. This was usually done in BCD rather than decimal, which added another somewhat complicated step. The approach was so limiting, cumbersome and expensive that the introduction of even crudely configured banks of memory chips was a quantum leap forward. The "silicone advantage" was embraced immediately and enthusiastically. >From that time on, progress was made in speed, capacity and cost reduction.

Magnetic stripe cards In the late 1970s, the level of security in the encoding of access control cards was often touted by manufacturers as an indication of the security of their entire system. Often, purchasing decisions were based on card-encoding technique. Barium ferrite magnetic core cards and early proximity cards were heavily promoted. Magnetic-stripe-encoded cards had previously been considered easy to counterfeit, but two events allowed mag-stripe cards to achieve acceptance:

n The American Bankers Association, after years of study, adopted magnetic stripe encoding as a suitable standard for bank cards, and, ultimately, automated teller machine (ATM) usage. This provided an initial level of respectability to mag stripe even though a card plus a PIN was required by the ABA for all secure currency transactions. Less than 15 percent of access control readers had keypad provisions.

n Next came the 3M Company with its high-coercivity magnetic tape. Since the availability of hi-co tape was closely controlled by 3M, it was more difficult to produce counterfeit cards.

Even today, with prox cards costing less than ever before, mag stripe still maintains the market lead.

Proximity Proximity card reading has always been preferred over insertion or swipe designs. However, in the mid 1980s, prox cards and readers were priced at two to three times the cost of the more common cards. The most desirable application of prox readers was at outside locations where vandalism was difficult to control. Prox cards were also thicker and less durable than today's prox card offerings. As prox cards and reader prices came down, card thickness also came down, and the use of proximity grew rapidly. It is now economically feasible to install an all-prox reader system or to mix and match different card reading styles in one system.

Personal computers Another pivotal change occurred in the late 1980s: the dramatic introduction of affordable personal computers. This revolutionary event has changed the lives of most people in the developed world. Its effect on access control was profound. No longer was it necessary for manufacturers to design and build microcomputers to serve as dedicated CPUs for an access control system. More powerful, less expensive, off-the-shelf computers with worldwide distribution and repair service were available and competitively priced. Consistency and reliability were additional benefits. The focus of new security product development became system expansion capability rather than the size, speed or price of each manufacturer's custom CPU.

Off-line operation Degradation of security during off-line mode, i.e., when communication was lost between the CPU and the card readers, plagued early access control systems. Most systems of that era would revert to merely verifying the site or facility code of each badge during degraded mode operation. No screening of time schedules, void or valid status or anti-passback was performed. Some older systems operated in degraded mode for months until repairs were completed.

But with the utilization of inexpensive microcomputer and memory chips, manufacturers began to offer intelligent reader panels and controllers that were sophisticated enough to provide reasonable access control discrimination during the degraded mode. The absence of the host computer was hardly noticeable when communication with the host was lost. In large systems, this intelligent controller design also improved the speed of card processing at a door, since decisions were made at a local level by the controller. Prior to this, the CPU was required to process all card reader inputs, which created unacceptable delays in active, larger installations.

Windows 95 Until the mid 1990s, each access control manufacturer's system had its own look and feel on the computer screen. When Microsoft introduced its Windows 95 operating system, a key change was destined to take place in access control system presentation and design. The Windows 95 protocol, if adhered to as required by Microsoft specifications, results in a uniform, look-alike series of screens, task bars and instructions. The unique design that previously characterized each access control manufacturer's DOS-based system could be replaced with a familiar, Windows 95 version. The up side to this change is the uniformity or universality of entering commands, viewing data, and storing and retrieving files, simplifying operator training and system operation.

It is interesting to note that some dealers and end-users still prefer a well-executed DOS system. It is probably just a matter of time before DOS will be dead in access control.

The future This is a period of dynamic technological change in our society, our industry and certainly in access control system design. If the pace and rate of change in the recent past is an indication of things to come, change will further accelerate, and annual improvements will exceed those that required decades to evolve. Learn all you can about new and recent product introductions, and, most of all, keep an open mind.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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