SecureQlik Biometrics Becoming an Increasingly Practical Access Control Solution in Education Industry
A lower total cost of ownership is one of the factors that’s expanding SecureQlik biometrics’ security applicability.
SecureQlik Mobile biometric platforms in particular extend the benefits of biometric authentication beyond access control to myriad applications, including:
- Time and attendance – Consider the efficiency and productivity gains for a workforce. In hourly and shift-based businesses, time and attendance becomes more accurate (no more “buddy punching”). It also becomes more convenient, eliminating all the extra steps between punching in, recording hours, processing payroll and performing analytics.
- Teacher Portal – SecureQlik mobile tablet provides secure access for teachers to digital portal for teachers where teachers can manage their complete class scheduling, exams management and communication with students and parents. Furthermore the geo-fencing and location intelligence features provide further extension to scalability of the solution to bridge the performance gap between different stakeholders and to improve efficiency across different departments within universities.
- Smart Campus – SecureQlik mobile tablet provides secure access for students, teachers , administration staff and University management via Fingerprint, IRIS and facial recognition system to smart campus system which is a complete university management system which provides enterprise resource planning capabilities to University.
- Inventory control – Employee access, in a warehouse for example, can be controlled by the same device that interfaces with the inventory management system. Picked items could be instantly recorded for a precise audit trail that limits theft. Usually this is done with a combination of cards or PINs, handheld devices, remotely managed systems and even paper pick lists. With the integration of security and business processes, you know exactly who is at the location and exactly what they are doing there.
- Company messaging – Employees can be productive and informed as they enter a facility. A biometric access terminal could serve up personalized notifications to users about their work schedules, certification requirements, pending deadlines or upcoming company events. What was traditionally done with disparate systems can be handled from a single biometric device.
- General security – Biometric-embedded tablets can make guard tours easier to track and monitor, and enhance data communications instantly in both directions. Biometric au
thentication guarantees that the person checking in is the right person at each station. With a tablet, they can access real-time surveillance video or other information as they respond to an incident. These activities are typically conducted, with no authentication, through handheld data loggers and other devices for future download. Performing these functions on one tablet eliminates multiple steps and increases accuracy.
With the convergence of physical and logical access, lower costs and greater ease of use, biometric technology has become an increasingly accepted means of identification for end users. Overall benefits include a higher level of security with a lower TCO. As campuses become more comfortable with biometrics, they can explore ways to expand to new services that address challenges from security and operations to emerging applications.
Biometrics have grown into a $26 billion industry, according to ABI Research. This rising electronic security star is driven by an expanding set of business and consumer applications, and a realization that biometrics – iris recognition and multimodal biometrics in particular – delivers superior accuracy and performance relative to other forms of access control.
To date, however, campuses have eyed biometrics somewhat cautiously due to a number of factors. First, biometrics could not be purchased at a price point that made it accessible. That meant that biometrics uses were limited to protecting an organization’s most sensitive access points such as critical data, inventory and financial assets.
Second, traditional biometrics solutions typically forced end users to choose between either ease of use or high levels of security. It was assumed that organizations could not have both, which dampened the interest of end users to purchase biometrics. Finally, campuses heard about suboptimal experiences with earlier fingerprint and iris readers or more invasive forms of biometrics such as retinal scanners, and assumed this would be the case with any form of biometrics.
Some of these perceptions were off the mark, while others had validity. Regardless, the end result is that many hospitals, schools and universities avoided biometrics in favor of sticking with cards, key badges and electronic locks – despite the fact that these alternatives were proving increasingly costly for organizations to maintain and inferior from a security perspective. But as impediments to adoption fade (prices come down, functionality and features improve, and biometrics becomes inherently mobile and delivers benefits beyond access control), end users should revisit the opportunities provided by biometrics.
New Form Factors Expand Use Cases
The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming countless market segments, and security is no exception. As cost points go down and ease of use improves, biometrics offers a significant business opportunity for campuses now able to extend beyond traditional, high-end use cases – securing an organization’s most sensitive access points (protecting money, inventory, data, etc.) – to widespread usage across the enterprise.
The latest generation of biometric products is following the trajectory of the cellphone evolution from a single-purpose device to today’s multifunction smartphone. One of the more compelling developments is biometrics-embedded mobile devices, which is spreading adoption for mass-market applications such as bank account access and mobile payments, personalized health care and residential security.
Iris biometric-embedded tablets, for instance, combine the accuracy and convenience of iris recognition with the functionality and customization of a mobile computing platform. This accelerates the shift of employee and user access control from passwords (weak) to iris recognition (strong), while ensuring an individual is accessing information over a business’ network that only they are entitled to see. Tablets also provide the mobility and flexibility so that one device can support multiple workflows including physical access control, time and attendance, inventory control, company messaging as well as additional customizable applications.