Access Control Technologies to Watch in 2016

Here’s a look at some of the leading access control technologies to watch in 2016.

Wireless locks

As business owners and institutions seek greater flexibility and lower total cost, wireless locks are becoming ever more popular. By leveraging Wi-Fi or Extended Access Control infrastructure, wireless locks can easily be added to a new or existing access control system without having to modify doors or run cable. While sales of wireless locks have been on the rise in recent years, they’re expected to grow even more in 2016.

Integrated systems

Throughout 2016, there will be an even greater demand for integrated security solutions, with institutions and businesses looking for access control technologies that can be easily integrated with other systems. This helps business owners gain even more value from their access control technology through improved insight into incidents, faster response, and more. For example, a growing number of universities are integrating their access control, emergency notification, and video surveillance systems, which is helping officials detect and respond to emergency situations faster than ever.

Networked access control

While offline locks are still very applicable in certain situations, networked card readers are becoming increasingly popular every year. Internet-enabled access control devices give business owners more advanced feature sets, greater integration capabilities, and improved scalability. In addition, they enable end users to access certain features from remote desktops and mobile devices, all through cloud capabilities

Cloud-based access control

By sending certain access control functions “to the cloud,” your institutions and businesses can benefit from exciting new features, such as remote access and management of certain functions. For example, during an emergency, many school officials want to be able to remotely lock down buildings on campus, which is now possible using the cloud-based features of their access control management software.

Cloud-based services are also enabling the growing trend of Access Control as a Service (ACaaS), which is expected to be one of the fastest-growing areas of physical security in 2016. In this set-up, the business or institution are not only using the cloud for data storage; it’s also where their entire access control infrastructure is hosted.

By making use of off-site servers, ACaaS enables businesses and institutions to save money on their initial access control investment, while also keeping ongoing maintenance costs and commitment to a minimum. Although day- to-day functions such as cardholder activation, lock-down, and reporting can still be done on site, the heavy lifting is taken care of by the ACaaS provider. ACaaS is becoming especially popular with smaller businesses-mainly those with 30 or fewer doors to secure-such as schools, doctors’ offices, and city government facilities. With a service-based access control solution, businesses will enjoy lower up-front costs and will not need in-house expertise for managing their servers.