The Top 4 Access Control Trends

By Mitchell Kane, President and GM, Vanderbilt Industries

A look at the technology innovations that are poised to enhance the industry

While the pace of innovation in access control has historically lagged behind that of video surveillance and other product segments within physical security, it is not as if there has been a dearth of access control technology developments. Unlike the video side of the market, where the needs and the demands of customers are always in flux, end users are much more resistant to changes in access control, because they usually affect many more parts of the organization than the typical camera network.

Some of the recent access control developments that could have wide-reaching implications for the market as a whole moving forward include advances in mobile credentials, enhanced integration of access control and video, the proliferation of offline locks, and the trend of expanding access control beyond the perimeter.

1. Mobile Credentials

One cannot begin to discuss the promise of mobile credentials without first addressing the disappointment that has been the use of near field communication (NFC) technology. Several vendors genuinely believed that NFC-enabled smartphones would revolutionize how people interact with access control, which would subsequently change how companies approached the market. The truth of the matter is that relatively few of these deployments moved out of the pilot phase, and the technology itself is on shaky ground.

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