By Alexander Farnsworth
CLIQ technology is tried and proven. Now it is time to expand its wings.
ASSA ABLOY’s CLIQ technology is based on highly miniaturized electronics that can be placed inside the core of a lock cylinder, and activated by an intelligent key.
As with all such advanced technologies these days, these small wires and tiny silicon chips, on both the lock and key sides, are becoming faster, more networked, and can contain more information.
After a successful launch in the commercial market in 2002 – multi-tenant buildings and corporations - these locking systems are progressively finding their way into consumer markets like homes and apartments.
“More Internet, more GPRS, more memory, and faster transfer speeds to a PC of the audit trails, and more consumer oriented products, that is where we are going five years down the line,” says Petter Hedman, R&D Manager, E-Cylinder Platforms, Shared Technologies, ASSA ABLOY.
In short, CLIQ, as it is today, is an intelligent lock system that permits unprecedented security when a security guard, receptionist, or other administrator needs to grant or deny access to a particular room, area, or facility.
CLIQ can accept or deny key entry depending on the time of day, it can register all accepted or denied entries, and it can terminate a key’s access if lost.
For the user – a guard or a receptionist – the advantage is a foolproof way of allowing or denying access to a facility. For example, security guards on their rounds can see who has come through a particular door, report it, and if necessary, deny further access.
The way it works is that the security guard does his rounds and downloads previous access information to his security key – which just registers the information - and then knows who has had access to which facility. This information is then fed back into a PC to be controlled, and changed if need be.
It also works the other way, where via a PC, access to a room or facility is granted on a time basis.
That’s all fine and dandy, but hardly “news” for security professionals. After all, CLIQ has been around for years.
But in the near future, what is happening with CLIQ is that the memory chip inside the cylinder will become bigger – from 8 kb to 128 kb - which is a substantial improvement given the millimeter size constraints inside the lock cylinder. Meanwhile, the service key’s internal memory will expand from 40 kb to 8 MB, making the security guard’s rounds a lot more efficient. More information in the long run means less work for him or her, as more doors, or access points, can be checked during the same rounds.
“More memory inside the security key means that the security guard can check more doors, and download the access information into a PC, in a much faster way than he or she can today,” says Hedman. “It is all about developments in micro-electronics.”
Bringing this all to the consumer level is the next attempt. For example, many people would like to control and change a home security system from afar. That may be reality in the near future, says Hedman.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to allow access to your house in Gothenburg to a carpenter on a Thursday between 11:00 and 2:00, using the GSM network, while you’re in Thailand on a vacation,” says Hedman.