![]() This customizability is key to any good access control system. Moreover, different readers controlled by the same system can be programmed differently, such that a given employee might have access to fewer doors than, say, a sysadmin. Readers can be programmed to respond to and allow access to any given number of cards and to deny access to any other number of chips. Keys accomplish this with a complicated system of cylinders and pins, but key cards use a more sophisticated computer science solution. If you don’t immediately see where we’re going with this, think about a master key: a master key is a single key that has access to all the locks in a given space, whereas other keys might only have access to one or a few of those locks. Customizability: Different People have Different Access LevelsĪnother stroke of genius is the creation of keys: customizability, and the ability to grant different levels of access to different people, all with the same key. This means that you can have a single reader that’s equipped to recognize any number of cards with compatible NFC or Bluetooth chips. A reader is just a Bluetooth and NFC receiver, and with their Bluetooth and NFC chips, any modern card can be granted access to any modern reader that it’s compatible with. Modern key cards take this to the next level, with their programmability. Again, it seems obvious that many cards should be able to access the same reader, but that’s only because this functionality has been in place for millennia with regular keys. This modularity of use was totally copied in the modern era with the arrival of key cards and fobs. ![]() I don’t even want to think about what that would mean for the American household. ![]() What if your office manager was the only one with a key to the office? You’d all have to wait for one person to unlock it every morning, and they’d have to be the last one out at night! Or if your mom was the only one with a house key. This way, you can restrict access to not just one specific person, but to a wider group of people. That would certainly work, but the idea of making locks modular and accessible by multiple cards is a stroke of genius. Your first thought would be to make a one-to-one system, with some sort of lock that had its own dedicated key. Imagine you are designing an access control system, without any knowledge of what keys or key cards were, and without any context whatsoever. It seems an obvious idea to anyone thinking about it these days, but it’s deceptively clever. Maybe the most important feature of any access control system is the fact that you can have one access point with multiple people able to access it. Modularity: Multiple Passes to Open the Same Door We’ll look at some of the history behind the key and the key card, focusing on the core features of each one. History: the Heydays of the Key and the Key CardĪs much as modern access control is the future, the key and the key card have had their day in the sun, and have certainly transformed access control and served their purpose well. Well, the good news is that there are alternatives out there! In this article, we’ll discuss how you can avoid using key cards and keys, and explore the alternative: modern access control. It’s also likely that you’re often frustrated by this process: fumbling around in your pockets, backpack, or wallet, forgetting them at home or on your desk on the way to the bathroom, or maybe even losing track of them entirely. ![]() If you currently work in an older or semi-modern office, chances are you use some combination of physical keys and key cards to unlock your doors and access your space.
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