Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Whether it’s a K-12 school system or large university, campuses all have the same basic security needs: safety and security, and giving students, parents and staff the confidence that administrators are on top of things with a multi-layered approach.
Controllers are an increasingly important element for meeting these needs. In the past, they were largely single-purpose devices, but today’s intelligent controllers play a much larger and more pivotal role, enabling organizations to integrate disparate systems into one unified solution for enhanced security, efficient management and innovative building capabilities. Controllers leverage open architectures to improve flexibility, ROI, scalability and cybersecurity throughout the life cycle, and streamline the path to upgraded capabilities while still supporting legacy solutions.
Open standards and platforms are the foundation for an access control infrastructure that simplifies upgrades and the integration of third-party applications so that users aren’t “locked in” to a finite set of capabilities and can adapt to support new functionality. School administrators want limitless options, flexibility, and freedom to choose products, systems and integrations they can leverage through a common application and interface rather than a rip-and-replace project. OEMs who serve them likewise want to seamlessly integrate controllers with both on-premises and cloud-based access control environments.
Open standards and platforms are the foundation for an access control infrastructure that simplifies upgrades and the integration of third-party applications so that users aren’t “locked in.”
To accomplish these objectives, intelligent controller hardware must support many open standards including OSDP, BACnet, PSIA, MQTT and numerous networking protocols. This enables many different devices and applications to be integrated using an Application Programming Interface (API).
An example of this approach is Mercury’s recently launched MP Series controllers that provide an open, cybersecure platform for delivering future-ready performance. Supported by an OEM ecosystem comprising approximately 30 OEM partners, these controllers were designed to give users the freedom to choose best-of-breed manufacturers through whom they could have long-term control over their investments in the total cost of ownership in their access-control infrastructure.
These products also leverage a future-ready third-party app development environment within the controller to further streamline and expand integrations. This puts integration control in the hands of those implementing the technology. The controllers easily integrate with complementary devices, from wireless locks to intrusion detection products that naturally integrate within the access-control infrastructure for a better, more intelligent system. Each new device in the ecosystem extends options while building upon previous integrations and investments.
Once campus security teams standardize on a controller, they benefit from both existing and future supported devices and integrations within the ecosystem. They realize these benefits through a simple firmware or app update on the controllers already installed on the wall.
Some argue that APIs are less secure, but the truth is that a proprietary solution is not inherently better than an open solution from a data and information security standpoint. All products must be designed, built and integrated, from the ground up, with a cybersecurity perspective in mind.
This means that development teams must be governed by the policy of a secure design lifecycle spanning everything from processors to firmware to APIs and the Software Development Kit (SDK). From the initial design phase forward, everything must be built with cybersecurity in mind and leverage the latest encryption and other standards and capabilities that IT departments demand of all network elements.
Ultimately, the cybersecurity question isn’t whether a solution is “open” or “closed” – it is whether it has been built to deliver the desired processing method and functionality, on the foundation of a secure design lifecycle policy.
Two of the more important problems to solve with open-architecture controllers is simplifying the path from legacy to current access control systems and increased/updated cybersecurity protections.
Controllers installed decades ago cannot provide the cybersecurity protections that are required today. Most have likely been on the wall for 10 or more years and are exposing educational institutions to failure risks and cybersecurity threats. While these aging controllers continue to serve their purpose, many institutions including universities with enterprise-level security needs must upgrade them to the latest generation as quickly as they can – without being forced to before they are ready because a product has reached End of Life (EoL) and is no longer supported.
The ideal solution is ensuring that each new generation of controllers can operate in “legacy mode” to emulate the prior generation product. Delivered through firmware, this capability combines backwards compatibility with earlier product generations and an easy migration path to new product generations. This dual-pronged approach eliminates previous challenges related to upgrading and also navigating end-of-sale and end-of-life situations. Users can continue to grow and expand their current environment with new controllers that offer new benefits but can also behave like the prior generations of controllers.
Also important for this upgrade path is that the physical design of all new controllers use the same footprint as previous product generations. A common form factor across all products makes for a seamless board swap when replacing an earlier generation to move into the future. With no requirement of a forced upgrade from a prior generation product family, customers can move forward with upgrades at their own pace rather than having to follow an artificial timeline mandated by the manufacturer.
To maximize the value of intelligent controllers as the foundation for a future-proof access control infrastructure, it is important to evaluate intangibles. These include elements like the controller brand trust factor and manufacturer commitment to further enhancing security in their products, from secure boot capabilities to cryptography.
There also are significant upcoming controller innovations to consider. Controller technology is evolving to enable versatile processing close to the security decision point, which includes expanding the power and storage available on the hardware and increasing the options for developers to create new solutions. As controllers get smarter, they will run diverse and sophisticated apps locally with high performance, and connect to a widening range of sensors, devices and systems. They also will be executing complex procedures in real time using advanced analytics at the edge, providing faster performance than devices that are dependent on upstream network communications.
Controllers have come a long way in the past several decades. As they evolve to support advanced software execution capabilities locally, they will elevate security at the point of execution for a future-proof infrastructure that evolves at the speed of software and supports dynamic operations that need a flexible and extensible PACS edge computing solution. In the meantime, open-architecture controllers are already creating a more capable, flexible and scalable access control infrastructure and providing the kind of “openness” that matters most to university security teams.
By Tim Nyblom, Director, End User Business Development, Higher Education, HID
