From the editor’s desk: Converging access control
November 2018, News
Welcome to the Access & Identity Management Handbook 2019. Were publishing this in January as opposed to our traditional end-of-year publishing schedule to make sure you have some bed-time reading for the start of the year. If you have the physical magazine in your hands, youll be glad to know it was designed to operate during rolling blackouts (or load shedding to be politically correct).
Last year was a tough one for most of the security industry in Africa, and the world for that matter, so lets hope 2019 sees an about-turn in the budget restrictions we have become accustomed to, although Eskom seems hell-bent on making sure the South African economy hits the bottom and starts digging. This is, however, a good time to be in the candle business.
This years handbook contains articles covering a variety of topics, but there is one common thread among almost all of them, the way in which the IT industry is now a part of physical access control and will play a greater role going forward. Whether its access based on the IP protocol, cloud and hosted technologies, cyber security or the greater role of IT personnel in access control decisions, IT has moved in and traditional physical access control is very much a converged industry today.
That is not to say there is no future for the physical access control manufacturers, integrators and installers, far from it. The
society we live in requires securely controlled access from the home to business and even restricted government and national utility installations not that anyone wants to steal any outdated Eskom equipment, but the concept remains. The difference is these systems need to be integrated and interoperate with the digital world, hence the need for IT skills. And I think the need for cyber security skills is a given in whatever industry you are in these days.
In one of our articles we cover a webinar HID Global broadcast in which it showed how IT departments are getting involved in physical access control decisions, even to the point of specifying equipment, so we are not merely hyping the convergence idea because it sounds trendy. We also cover the whole concept of the full convergence of physical and logical access, something most people see as a given for the future, but one which nobody seems to know exactly how to accomplish as your traditional physical security people are a different species from your traditional IT people. Its been said they dont actually speak the same language. 
Nonetheless, convergence will happen as more security risks involve physical security products and installations as an easy way to get into the corporate network (not that IT departments have anything to boast about when it comes to security). Perhaps a new breed of converged access control specialists will emerge to change the industry for the better, or we can all rely on Eskom to ensure that cyber risks are nullified (because computers dont work on candle power), but then we will still need physical access experts to control the flow of people.
Andrew Seldon
Editor
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Further reading:
- Trust but continually verify
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Hi-Tech Security Solutions looks at access and identity management and asks some industry players what ‘zero trust’ and ‘least privilege’ access means.
- Managing who, what and why
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Cyber Security
Today’s access control isn’t only concerned with who has access, but also what has access, why they need it and what they are doing with it.
- Physical/logical convergence
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Cyber Security, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
The convergence between physical and logical (or cyber) security will be a game-changer because it will change the way we do everything, from planning to design and all the way to installation and maintenance.
- The expanding role of IT in access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, IT infrastructure
What role is IT playing in the world of physical access control and how far will its role expand in future?
- Taking augmented identity to the world
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions
Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to Gary Jones, VP Global Channel and Marketing biometric access and time solutions) at IDEMIA (formerly Morpho) about his career with the company and its new vision of Augmented Identity.
- A scan of fingerprint biometrics
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management
Given the increase in the use of fingerprint technology in public and private organisations, as well as some recent announcements on the reliability or lack or reliability of certain types of sensors and algorithms in the fingerprint biometric market, Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to some of the leading fingerprint biometric vendors in the market to find out more about the state of this market.
- BIMS set to change identity management
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Local biometrics integrator, Ideco Biometric Security Solutions, has announced that its Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) has been launched to market.
- Your face tells a story
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, CCTV, Surveillance & Remote Monitoring, Government and Parastatal (Industry)
Facial recognition has advanced to the point where it can be rolled out over large areas and accuracy is no longer a hit-and-miss affair.
- The right access decisions
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management
Making the right access control decision depends on what you want secured and how secure it should be.
- IP is no stranger to access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Just as the surveillance market made the move to IP-based communications, the access control market is also moving to IP (or some say it already has).
- Applying the SaaS model to access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions
The software-as-a-service model has proven transformative to many organisations, and even entire industries. The benefits it can offer are undeniable, but in the security sector which is risk-averse by necessity, we wanted to hear the views of some local experts in access control as a service (ACaaS) to find out what some of the pros and cons are.
- Cloud-based access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions
Running your access control through a cloud service has made people nervous in the past, but today’s solutions are hard to beat.
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