Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Apparently, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas, at least when it comes to autonomous food delivery vehicles. The Clark County Board of Commissioners voted to allow the robots – previously confined to the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus – to make deliveries in surrounding off-campus areas.
It may not seem like a big deal, but the decision could have ramifications for other campuses and cities across the country.
UNLV has been seeking permission to use their on-campus dining operation’s fleet of robots to deliver food to a series of nearby residential complexes, but regulations in Clark County, and presumably in most jurisdictions across the country, don’t allow it. They may not explicitly forbid it in statute but crossing the literal and figurative lines almost certainly is a no go.
It is true that this is one campus, one community, and a limited geographic expansion. But we all know single steps often open floodgates. Years from now our institution’s robot fleet may be serving our entire community, and that could be a great thing ... or not.
To address the question, the County Commission added the issue to their meeting agenda to consider setting policies that, if met, would allow robots to venture onto city sidewalks.
Specifically, the agenda item read:
Conduct a public hearing and approve, adopt, and authorize … Personal Delivery Device Operators; providing for the licensure of personal delivery devices; establishing license application requirements; providing for business license fees; and providing for other matters properly related thereto.
Before the measure was unanimously approved, an amendment specified that robots could not reduce the width of the sidewalk to less than 48 inches or reduce accessibility standards except when actively crossing an intersection or crosswalk.
According to an article in the Las Vegas Sun, “the ordinance allows the devices to carry food and nonalcoholic beverages to students and staff … saving customers from having to walk across Maryland Parkway on hot days or at night to get food, which was a safety concern.”
Constance Brooks, vice president of government and community relations at UNLV, added that it will “provide us with more safe and accessible food options for students.”
This decision was possible at the county level, because a law passed last year by the Nevada Legislature empowered local governments to decide on the issue for their jurisdiction.
Clark County added restrictions including:
The move opens an array of opportunities, questions, and concerns for other campuses utilizing – or considering – autonomous delivery.
It is true that this is one campus, one community, and a limited geographic expansion. But we all know single steps often open floodgates. Years from now our institution’s robot fleet may be serving our entire community, and that could be a great thing ... or not.
Will campus vehicles deliver to people not connected to the university? Will they deliver food from off-campus restaurants as well as on-campus dining facilities? How will revenue sharing work between the campus, robot provider, and local government? Where does the liability shift start and stop?
It is likely that some of these issues are still undetermined at UNLV and in Clark County … but everybody goes to Vegas to try their luck.
Ironically, because of road construction in the area the robots are unlikely to leave campus until sometime in 2026. This leaves plenty of time for all parties to see if and how other communities address the issue.
Austin Peay State University began replacing physical ID cards with mobile credentials at the start of the Fall 2024 semester. The new IDs can be added to either an individual’s iPhone and Apple Watch or Android device.
All new students and staff receive the mobile credential, and existing cardholders have the option to upgrade to the digital version of the ID. Those without smartphones or compatible devices can still request a physical ID card.
The Govs Card website encourages students to, “tap your iPhone, Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy, or other eligible Android phones at readers across campus to conveniently use your Govs Mobile ID Card. Your Govs Mobile ID Card acts just like your physical card and now you can add it to your preferred digital wallet.”
In addition to having the eAccounts app setup, the student must also be enrolled in the university’s two-factor authentication service and have an approved photo on file.
The new IDs are issued via the Transact eAccounts app – available on the App Store and Google Play. It takes just a few minutes to go through the enrollment process and begin using the mobile ID.
In addition to having the eAccounts app setup on their mobile device, the student must also be enrolled in the university’s two-factor authentication service and have an approved photo on file.
For existing students with a photo already approved for their physical card, no additional work is required. New students, however, must use the photo upload process to have their photo approved.
Like most campuses, the transition to mobile ID at Austin Peay has been in the works for several years as new reader infrastructure was put in place to support both contactless cards and NFC mobile wallets.
Govs ID Card Supervisor Natalie Ross Baggett told ClarksvilleNow that the groundwork for this transition has been underway since the project was approved in Fall 2022.
They had a soft-launch at the start of 2024, and she says the response was positive and gave them the opportunity to address issues.
“The biggest concern we’ve heard is fear of people not being able to use the card if their battery dies,” she says. “But with an iPhone or Apple device, there’s a five-hour battery reserve that allows owners to use their mobile IDs after their phones die.”
Applications supported by the card and now the mobile ID include:
In time for the start of the new academic year, Grubhub has added more than 60 schools to its Campus Dining business. Chief among the services provided is the integration of mobile ordering into an institution’s dining and meal plan offerings. With the new partnerships, the Campus Dining division now serves more than 4.5 million students at 360 institutions.
Partner institutions can opt for mobile integration, on- or off-campus ordering, kiosk ordering, and a variety of other services. Students use their campus-specific homepage within the Grubhub mobile app to select local restaurants or on-campus dining locations.
The inclusion of on-campus locations in the Grubhub app gives students flexibility and increases the value of meal plans.
By providing students with flexibility in how and when they use their dining plans, the inclusion of on-campus locations in the popular Grubhub app increases the value of meal plans.
In addition to the mobile ordering benefits, new food service technologies have helped spur the expansion to other campuses.
Grubhub supports delivery robots from Cartken, Kiwibot and Starship. More than 20 Grubhub campuses are already using robots to deliver hundreds of thousands of orders.
This fall, new robots are heading to a dozen additional schools including the University of Mississippi, Prairie View A&M, Howard University, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Houston.
Ursinus College, the University of Virginia, and Lindenwood University are deploying autonomous stores this fall with Grubhub.
Stevens Institute of Technology, Montclair State, and Loyola University Maryland already use the technology to let students shop at campus convenience stores, exit without interacting with a cashier or self-checkout station, and have payment automatically deducted from their meal plan, declining account balance, or other linked payment method.
To address the push for more sustainable options across campus, Grubhub has partnered with Topanga.io to offer reusable take-out solutions. Topanga’s ReusePass program lets students specify sustainable packaging via the Grubhub app and have their meals packaged in a reusable container.
Virginia Tech and the State University of New York at New Paltz will launch the service this this semester, joining Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Ohio State, Colorado State, Boston University, University of Delaware and Brandeis.
Topanga’s ReusePass lets students specify sustainable packaging via the Grubhub app and have their meals packaged in a reusable container.
“Our technology allows our partners to operate their dining facilities more efficiently by providing them with the ability to get diners through lines faster and provide a broad range of pickup and delivery innovations,” says Rob DelaCruz, vice president and general manager of Grubhub Campus.
With the addition of the 60+ new campuses, Grubhub Campus Dining continues to be a driving force, reshaping the way institutions feed their constituents.
Centennial College in Toronto, Canada serves a population of 30,000 students and staff. They implemented their contactless MyCard program in 2016 with partner TouchNet.
Sarah Van Osch, Director of Ancillary Services, has the MyCard program within her portfolio of responsibilities. She spoke to CampusIDNews about the launch of the program, the change management required, and way the data and heatmaps generated helps her make decisions for other campus services.
Some of our revenues are now flipping, so we have to really dive into the program and ask what is next and how can we find those use cases to really bring in new dollars.
“When we pull our data and our reports from our sales transactions, our access and that sort of thing, we can see the mapping of where students are going at certain days, certain times,” says Van Osch. “And helps across all of ancillary services as well as other student services, because we can tell what do we need to have open.”
“Working with the TouchNet team, I've never felt that there wasn't a problem that we couldn't solve,” she says. “MyCard for Centennial and for my portfolio is my license to have fun.”
To watch the interview, click the image at the top of this page.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there, my name is Sarah Van Osch. I am the Director of Ancillary Services for Centennial College. We're located in Toronto, Canada, and we have five different campuses, about 25,000 students and 4,000 staff.
We undertook One Card in 2015, and we worked on a super-fast rollout which was a lot to do in a short amount of time when you are starting from scratch.
We really pulled together a dynamic team from across the entire institution when it came to the finance piece, the IT piece, which was huge, and the people piece, and the change management piece that we weren't quite sure how this was going to go because it was a big change and a very big lift.
I would say that we became a very tight-knit team, and we decided that we were going to be one of the first institutions to do this, do it big, and be contactless.
We were able to do that, and along the way, different things would come up, and we would have to change our plans, and we always found that there would be a workaround, and we worked really great with our partners at TouchNet to make sure that that happened.
If we stumbled upon a bit of a roadblock or a challenge, there was always a way to get around it, and so we did.
Our one-card program we refer to as MyCard at Centennial, and when we launched in 2016, we brought on our food services for our major partnership across all five campuses, as well as our hospitality school that also sold food and our student union.
We knew that if we were going to launch a program, we had to include food across all campuses.
We brought in access for our parking, we brought in access for our residents, we used it in our bookstores, our vending, and I'm probably forgetting a few other things because there are so many use cases that we stumbled upon along the way that we couldn't even have imagined at that time, but then we knew that the future was going to be bright.
So once we had that established and we launched in 2016, we found that we were able to really start to bring in revenue around that, but really it was truly changing the student experience and offering a service.
We would find new ways to bring MyCard into the Centennial world.
We also, as everyone, we went through the pandemic. There was a ton of change with that. And not only from the pandemic, we also had change in the transformation that we were going through throughout the college.
That changed how we did things in organizations, and it brought in a ton of new talent to the institution. And the best part was, is when we first brought in MyCard in 2016, we really had to work through the change management side of things.
Now, when we almost were reopening the college, MyCard was already there. It was integrated. There was no question.
It was more like, what's this great thing? I can do what with this? I can load money to the student cards.
My heart was so warm when I would hear the VP of Students solving problems with MyCard at an event because a student didn't get the right meal based on dietary needs.
Oh, don't worry.
We can just put money on your MyCard and problem solved. And the student was thrilled. A way she went, had her own lunch and whatever she wanted. So it's really just changed the landscape for us.
The other thing with that is that we did so much upfront first.
And then every semester, every startup, we would have, you know, a new challenge.
Something would change and we'd have to rise to that occasion.
But I think along the way, we really don't want to say we became stagnant because we found other ways to use the card in so many different lights.
But we know that we need to continue to rise above and do what the students are expecting that are already on campus and the new ones that are coming in.
So we know and what we're working towards is to move into mobile credentials.
We're not fully ready to do that.
But what we have done is we've put a number of things in place ahead of that.
We've moved our we've moved our software into the cloud with TouchNet.
We are working on all of our data points and we're basically doing that technically working with all of our partners and seeing where do we go from here and how can we best set ourselves up.
So hopefully, as we kind of move that train a little bit forward, it'll be a smaller lift to actually go fully mobile.
With MyCard, what we found is not only are we offering a service, but we are there to bring revenue into the institution. So what we're trying to do is keep all the dollars on campus wherever we can.
What has happened is the landscape has definitely changed through the pandemic.
What we may have been able to do as revenue generating has kind of flipped where we do work with our providers, and we do bring in a commission on a number of different services that we offer when it makes sense.
But at the same time, we also will have revenue come in from replacement cards.
But some of those revenues are now flipping, so we almost have to really dive into the program and say, OK, well, what is next and how can we find those use cases to really bring in new dollars or as a colleague always says, a penny saved is also something that will bring our program forward.
At Centennial, we are very much about the student experience and what we want to do and what we found that we can use MyCard for very effectively is finding all of the touch points that a normal student would have.
We've had to really sort of shift and change with coming back to campus when students and staff don't have to be on campus as much.
They can do so much more from home.
But the best part is, is that when we pull our data and our reports from all over our sales transactions, our access and that sort of thing, we can really see the pattern and the mapping of where the students and the staff are going at certain days, certain times.
And then that kind of helps across all of ancillary services as well as other student services, because we can tell what do we need to have open?
What campus is doing what?
Not only can we use the heat maps that we've developed, but we can also use the data that we can pull from our MyCard program.
And being the director of ancillary services, I work with a lot of outside providers and we build great partnerships and relationships.
The one thing I can say is working with the TouchNet team, I've never felt that there wasn't a problem that we couldn't solve.
We would typically, you know, get where we wanted to go.
But again, like I said, there's all these different workarounds that come up.
So the one thing I've always felt really great about is that we can put in that ticket, we can get the tech team and then if we need to go even further, they're always a phone call away and they will be on campus right away.
And so we've always found a way to solve that problem and they're just a great group to work with because we have fun.
I always say that MyCard for Centennial and for my portfolio is my license to have fun.
UNC-Chapel Hill students can already use their campus cards as their voter ID, but most have replaced that card with a mobile credential. During a recent meeting of the North Carolina State Election Board (NCSBE), the use of the mobile student ID was approved.
The 3-2 vote was along partisan lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. Chapel Hill students can begin using the new ID in the Nov. 5 general election.
Lindsey Wakely, Deputy General Counsel for NCSBE, told the board that the Mobile UNC One Card for students and employees complies with statutory criteria after election staff reviewed the college’s application forms.
North Carolina requires that voter IDs contain an expiration date, and Chapel Hill worked to comply with that requirement by adding the date to the mobile ID
But other board members disagreed.
“A mobile app is not an identification card,” says Republican board member Stacy Eggers.
“This is a different process we’re doing here than simply giving my friend my football tickets when I download them from the website,” he says. “In my reading of the statute, we simply don’t have the authority to do a mobile app in lieu of an identification card.”
In addition to questioning the security of the mobile credential, he went on to point out other concerns, including whether such a move requires legislative change and what the impacts might be on poll workers accepting this new form of ID.
Statutory change is one of the central issues in the debate. North Carolina’s voter ID law includes many references to cards but none to mobile or digital IDs. The law never states that the ID must be a physical card, but the vagary gave both sides room to argue.
Unlike Eggers, Democrat Board Chair Alan Hirsch believes legislative changes are not required.
“My own view is that there’s certainly enough flexibility within the statute for us to approve a digital card as a card,” says Hirsch. “I think that’s the way of the world … (the) younger generation lives by that and they don’t carry cards.”
A dissenter said a mobile app is not an identification card. We're not simply giving football tickets away after downloading them from the website
In North Carolina, there is requirement that voter IDs contain an expiration date.
According to Karen Brinson Bell, NCSBE Executive Director, the Board has rejected requests from other universities to accept their mobile IDs because they did not include an expiration date.
Chapel Hill, however, does have an expiration date on the mobile credential, which brings it into compliance.
“The state Republican Party later criticized the approval and suggested a possible legal challenge ahead,” says an AP article (https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-voter-identification-university-mobile-33a78f54c45a739b2c201c79dcbcd30d). “Minor adjustments to ballot access could affect outcomes in several anticipated close statewide races this fall in North Carolina.”
If your state accepts your institution’s mobile ID for voting, please comment below so we can further this discussion.
NC's approved campus IDs
Today it was officially announced that the parent company of The CBORD Group will acquire Transact for $1.5 billion. CBORD is owned by Roper Industries, an extremely large conglomerate that owns nearly 30 software and tech companies in multiple sectors. According to the announcement, Transact will be combined with the CBORD business.
In 2019, Blackboard sold the transaction system part of its business to the private equity firm Reverence Capital Partners for a rumored $750 million.
According to online sources, Roper’s strategy is to acquire well-managed companies with strong market positions, stable cash flows, and significant growth potential. They then allow these companies to operate autonomously.
The acquisition of Transact is a bit different for Roper, however, as it would not make sense to allow two competitors to operate autonomously. The businesses will be combined, and this will bring changes in staffing and platform offerings which will inevitably impact the client base.
While it is too early to have details for what this will mean for campus clients of both companies, CampusIDNews has requests in to speak to company representatives and will provide updates as they come in.
The Roper Group, founded in 1890, began as a manufacturing firm producing industrial equipment such as pumps, gas stoves, and lawn equipment. By the mid-20th century, Roper was a leader in precision tools and equipment. In the decades that followed, the company expanded its portfolio, selling certain product lines and acquiring new companies in the engineering and industrial sectors.
In the early 1980s, Roper shifted its focus to technology-driven solutions, investing heavily in research and development and pivoting from industrial equipment to software, medical devices, and analytical instruments.
In 1992, the company – now called Roper Industries – went public on the NASDAQ and today is a part of the S&P 500.
The 2000s marked a period of aggressive growth, with Roper acquiring a number of high-tech firms focused on niche markets in both manufacturing and software.
Today, the company’s website lists nearly 30 subsidiaries, categorizing them in three buckets: application software, networks software, and technology enabled products. Its market cap exceeds $56 billion.
In 2008, Roper acquired food service software and transaction system provider, The CBORD Group, for $367 million. In 2015, the company added another identity technology company, RF Ideas, to its portfolio.
According to online sources, Roper’s strategy is to acquire well-managed companies with strong market positions, stable cash flows, and significant growth potential. They then allow these companies to operate autonomously. By selecting companies with good cash flow and recurring revenue models, they are able to fund additional acquisitions without overburdening debt.
As mentioned above, it would not make sense to allow two competitors to operate autonomously so these businesses will be combined and this will result in to-be-determined changes.
Aug. 15, 2024 – 11:00 a.m.
According to a Roper Industries release, "The combined business will utilize both the Transact and CBORD brand names and be led by Transact’s CEO, Nancy Langer, with CBORD’s CEO, Dan Park, serving as Chief Operating Officer."
Aug. 15, 2024 – 2:00 p.m.
Sources report that the transaction was announced today, following successful completion of a Department of Justice 30-day review of the acquisition.
In the Wall Street Journal’s Money Briefing, campus cards and student discounts were front and center. The podcast titled, Companies Are Cracking Down on College Discounts for Non-Students, explored how possession of a student ID is no longer sufficient to get high value discounts from many national merchants.
Beyond local campus merchants, there are some pretty valuable discounts available to students, and many still try to get the discount after they graduate. But companies are working to make the process more difficult.
Apple, Amazon Prime, and Spotify all offer substantial discounts for streaming subscriptions. Students pay just $5.99 per month – about 70% off – for Apple Music and Apple TV plus. Apple also offers “educational pricing” on computers and hardware. Amazon Prime is about half-price for students.
ShareID taps into more than 200,000 data sources including university registers verify if someone is actually a student or not. At times they even make use of facial recognition.
The reason companies offer the discounts is simple. They want to create customers for life.
According to WSJ Reporter Mengqi Sun, stats show that streaming services can retain more than 90% of student customers even after they graduate and have to pay full price.
But how do they stop those trying to game the system and not pay full price?
In the past, showing a student ID card or proving possession of a college email address was all you needed to get the discounts. But many campus cards don't have expiration dates, and institutions are making campus email addresses evergreen to facilitate a long-term connection to the institution.
So retailers are demanding more.
One example of how they are doing this is through an identity verification service called ShareID.
“(ShareID) taps into more than 200,000 data sources including university registers and other kinds of verification data to verify if someone is actually a student or not,” says Sun. “And sometimes a brand might require someone to submit using facial recognition or IP address to verify their identity.”
There are many other identity verification companies vying for this business, and it seems the trend toward stronger authentication is here to stay. It looks like the days of flashing a campus card or signing up for a service using a campus email address are numbered.
LISTEN IN AT WSJ.COM
Auburn first launched mobile credentials in August of 2021 with the help of partners Allegion and CBORD. Of the 38,000 students, faculty and staff, more than 80% have a mobile credential provisioned. The credential is accepted virtually everywhere on campus.
It is used for building access, payment for food, athletic event entrance, library usage, residence hall doors, and more. Use in the parking and transit system is being considered for the future as well.
To make this project happen was no small task.
Auburn has 3000 Allegion MTB readers at exterior and interior entrances and several hundred AD300 wired locks at individual room doors.
“We knew probably 10 years before that we wanted to get rid of the mag stripe,” says Melanie Chambliss, IT Manager for the TigerCard. “It was outdated technology, and it was not secure.”
Auburn had upgrade a vast array of old technology and readers to support all the different use cases on campus.
According to Jeff Koziol, Allegion’s Business Development Manager for Mobile Credentials, Auburn has more than 3000 Allegion MTB readers controlling access at exterior and interior entrances and several hundred additional AD300 wired locks at individual room doors.
“I'm very excited for what the future holds …The students love it. The parents love it as well,” adds Chambliss. “I think it's a great time to be at Auburn.”
WATCH VIDEO
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
Swarthmore College has been an Allegion client for eight years, and they have been working toward a goal of the complete elimination of brass keys on campus.
The campus has 1,800 total doors and to date all exterior doors are equipped with electronic access control as well as 75% of the interior residence hall doors.
Though the Allegion interior locks have manual key override, very few people – only public safety, lock shop, and card office – have access.
“Our goal is to get to 100%,” says Anthony Condo, Director of Campus Services at Swarthmore College. “It'll probably take another two summers or so, but that is where we aim to be.”
He is starting to recognize that some students have never carried a key in their life, whether getting into vehicles, homes, hotels, or offices.
“I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house,” he explains. “I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.”
To check out the video, click the image at the top of this page.
TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Jeff Koziol with Allegion. I'm here with Anthony, Anthony, a little intro about yourself and your institution.
Sure, I'm Anthony Condo, the Director of Campus Services at Swarthmore College.
How long have you been an Allegion client?
This summer will be eight years. We began our card office program in the summer of 2016.
So what's, what does your infrastructure look like in terms of the head end access system? What do you have for hardware, your standards, door counts, things of that nature?
So we are a CBORD CS Gold school.
We have one-card locks on the exterior doors on all our buildings on campus, and we're slowly working towards getting all of our student rooms done. We also have some offices and labs done too.
In regards to total doors on campus, I think we're at about 1,800.
With regard to student doors, by the end of this summer, we'll have about 75% of those done also.
Goal is to get to 100?
Goal is to get to 100. It'll probably take another two summers or so, but that is where we aim to be.
Many students just don't have keys. I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house. I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.
Are you still handing out some brass keys to students?
So we have to hand them out, obviously, to the ones that don't have card access on the room. But, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted to put card access on the student rooms was so we wouldn't have to hand out keys anymore.
So over the years, we've seen that number of keys being handed out go down and down and down.
You know, it's one less thing that the student has to carry around with them. It's one less thing that they're going to lose. It just makes things easier for everybody.
Have you found that some students may not have even ever carried a key in their life, whether getting in and out of vehicles, their own homes, what?
I think now definitely we're starting to see that.
Maybe not so much eight years ago when we started, but I mean, now definitely they just don't have keys. I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house.
I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.
So what do you do for your camps and conferences and what do you do for access for those students that are coming to Swarthmore for a week or a couple of days?
We don't have formal classes during the summer, but we do have about 300 or so students stay. They're doing work on campus or research and then we do host camps also.
So for the rooms that still have a brass key, there's a little bit of work involved or our lock shop has to go around and change out the core for all those locks.
But again, that number is slowly going down and down.
Um, so now the rooms that have the card access on it, it's just a matter of doing some backend programming, start date and everything works.
Awesome. Last question. You know a lot of what you have in terms of the Schlage electronic locks on the interior doors, they have a key override. Who actually has access to those master keys now? Who is that limited to?
Very few people. Our public safety team, our lock shop, and then our card office has a key too.
There's just times when we may have to go and kind of be the first line of call when we have to go look at a lock or something, but that's, that's pretty much it.
Appreciate your insight.
Thanks, Jeff.
