Mobile phones set to provide access control with NFC

Your smartphone is already doing a lot of things than just a phone call. From playing games, clicking photographs, making presentations and watching movies, the definition of what a smartphone can do is expanding rapidly and will continue to expand in the future too. Now, with the advent of a technology called Near Field Communications (NFC), you can now even lock and unlock doors.

NFC is a short-range wireless communication technology standard that enables the exchange of data between devices over a distance of several centimeters.  It’s one of several new platforms that can be used to hold virtualized credentials that previously were stored on contactless smartcards and used to open doors.

The same contactless credentials that are programmed to provide various levels of facility access can now be loaded onto a mobile handset and used with NFC for secure access.  This eliminates the need to carry any other access credentials and makes it easier for security managers to track who is entering and exiting monitored access points,” says Ranjit Nambiar, Director of Sales, HID Global IAM - India and SAARC.

Nambiar states that NFC-enabled phones can make other contactless transactions, as well, including cashless payment and transit ticketing, data transfers including electronic business cards, and access to online digital content.  This makes it easy to combine multiple virtual credentials on a single device for things like secure facility access and the ability to make cashless payments.

Nambiar’s firm, HID Global in collaboration with Sony Corporation, has already   developed a contactless smart card reader platform that embeds secure access control capabilities NFC functionality into laptops and other mobile devices.

HID Global is also working with leading handset manufacturers and NFC semiconductor suppliers to embed NFC technology directly into phones to take full advantage of digital credentials. Recently, HID Global also announced its plan to support its iCLASS digital keys and mobile secure identity on NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones.  HID Global’s partnership with Research in Motion, manufacturers of the BlackBerry, will enable BlackBerry smartphone users to use iCLASS digital credentials for door access by simply holding their NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphone in front of a door reader in the same way physical smart cards are used today.

Another technology access solution from HID called Secure Identity Object (SIO) will make it possible for enterprises to securely provision and safely embed digital credentials into a variety of mobile devices.

“SIOs will provide an additional layer of security on top of device-specific security, acting as a data wrapper that provides additional key diversification, authentication and encryption, and guards against security penetration. Also, SIOs are created and bounded to one device, preventing it from being copied to another device, thus protecting sites against cloned card attacks,