Understanding the way HID access proximity cards work
Understanding the way HID access proximity cards work
Whoever has ever seen any of James Bond's film or any film where federal government facilities or large corporations are shown has seen actors and actresses swiping cards over card readers in order to have access to certain premises and we are quite familiar with the beep sound that is triggered whenever they try to enter a certain place where they are not supposed to be. These sophisticated ID badges, however, are not something that a film director has created out of his imagination. In fact, they do exist and are adopted by large international corporations, federal government facilities and medium sized business organizations that work with sensitive information and need to ensure that only authorized staff members have access to it.
These highly sophisticated ID badges are called HID proximity cards. They are not bigger than any credit card, driver's license or ordinary ID badge you may already be familiar with, but they are much more secure. Each HID badge has embedded information that can be individually customized for each of your employees so that each of them has a specific clearance level that allows them or restricts them from entering a certain facility or have access to a certain computer file.
In order to be fully effective, HID proximity cards need to be combined with a central computer system where all the employees' information is stored, card readers where the employees can swipe their HID badges over and access control panels.
HID proximity cards then work as security officers that read the information incorporated in the cards and can the automatically establish in a blink of an eye if the card holder is authorized to enter into that area or read that computer file or print that document. All the information in the card is encoded in a specific and unique series of a binary code of zeros and ones that is then read by the card reader. The card reader automatically transmits the information to the access control panel that analyses the data embedded in the HID badge and determines if the card holder is authorized or is not to enter that specific premise.
Business owners and managers can easily update or modify the information encrypted on any of the HID badges so that employees can be provided with additional access to otherwise restricted areas if they are needed to collaborate with a specific project or if they have been given a rise and therefore are now granted to view certain documents or enter certain areas.