By Risto Pakarinen

The need for fewer cards that still guarantee the security for both physical access control and the IT environment is driving the convergence in the smart card business, says Kurt Schmid, CEO of OMNIKEY, an ASSA ABLOY company that is a world leader in innovative smart card readers.

Kurt, convergence seems to be all around us. Different applications are converging into one. Can you see the same phenomenon in the smart card business?
I think we can see a convergence in our business as well, and it is starting to happen when two technologies are being put on the same plastic card. The main part of our business is contact smart cards, where you have credentials inside a chip on the card to guarantee a secure identification of the employee to the network. That would be interesting for companies that need strong authentication especially when they have a lot of remote employees, for example, traveling managers, that use the Internet to access the corporate network remotely.
The same people also have cards for access to the buildings. Most, if not all of the companies, would now like to see all the credentials on one card, and get rid of using multiple cards. However, it’s not easy because they have existing access control systems that are in place for many years. The cycle of changing the access door readers is a lot longer  - five to ten years - than the cycle of replacing PC readers which is a few years.
To solve that, you typically put two types of identification technologies on one card: the contact chip for the logic access, and a separate RFID chip embedded in the same plastic.
This is the first part of the convergence that you will see.

So this is a marriage of convenience, so to say. Physical access meets IT on one card.
It gets more advanced once you get to the newer technologies and the contactless smart cards. For example, silicon companies like Philips are doing excellent things with its chips, offering both a contact interface and a contactless interface on the same chip.  These new types of chips will replace the 125 kHz chips used today for physical access control and allow one chip being used in both worlds. These new technologies are on their way to becoming the world standard through the e-passport initiatives: Inside the new passports, there is a secure PKI-enabled chip embedded and used over a contactless interface.
These new types of chips will replace the today used 125 kHz chips used for physical access control and allow one chip being used in both world’s These new technologies are currently becoming the world standard through the e-passport initiatives: Inside the  upcoming passports a secure PKI-enabled chip is embedded and used over a contactless interface.

What are the drivers for this convergence?
One big driver is simplicity, both with the number of cards that people have to use, and also the management of the credentials. It takes much less effort to manage one credential that managing several.
The companies’ IT systems already have directories and they will now also be used to manage the physical access to the building. I think the IT department will take over the responsibility for the physical security in the offices on the long run.
Really, what is the difference between the door reader and PC reader? In the future, every door reader may have an IP address and they’ll be managed like any other networked device.

Is that the next step?
Certainly. Due to the reader replacement cycle times it is not going to be a reality tomorrow, but it will come, I am sure of that. I think we’re looking at a five to ten year window.

And finally, what will be the next step?
You can envision that your mobile phone has all the credentials so that you could open the doors and access your computer with the phone. Near Field Communication technologies (NFC) could revolutionize the way we work.
I think the mobile phone will be the focus point for integration of more technology for payment and authentication.