Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Sweden's Lund University had been leaning on the same access control system for nearly 20 years, but a new security overhaul has seen the university's Faculty of Law outfitted with a new system from ASSA ABLOY.
In many respects, Lund University is like any other large institution in that it serves a constantly evolving population of students, professors, researchers, support staff and visitors. The campus community also requires access to various campus areas and facilities. But when it came time for a security upgrade, the university wanted to avoid a campus-wide recard -- a particularly expensive proposition as Lund was already issuing smart cards. The university decided on Aperio wireless locks to control access for its campus community of nearly 50,000.
A major factor in the decision was the seamless integration between Aperio locks and Pacom’s Unison security management platform, which had been previously implemented at the university. The battery-powered escutcheons and cylinders, complete with card readers, are fully integrated with Pacom’s Unison system and have been installed wirelessly at the university's Law Faculty.
Aperio locks also work with the university’s existing MIFARE smart cards, so there was no need for 42,000 students and some 7,500 staff to return their cards for reprogramming, or to reactivate their permissions using update readers. The new locks are also managed centrally from a single administrative interface, so the transition has gone largely unnoticed by students and staff.
Wireless locks, and the flexibility they offer, now has Lund University officials refocusing efforts to more security-related endeavors, and spending less time on legacy practices like key management.
Because the locks can be managed online, security personnel can block lost or stolen cards immediately without the need to visit the door to replace a lock. Equally simple is revoking privileges for any staff or student that leaves the university. There’s no changing locks and no security threat associated with lost or copied physical keys; a feature that also saves the university on hardware-related costs.
At Clemson University, the TigerOne card office’s latest endeavor is creating a new access control system, a pursuit that began in 2012. Steve Robbins, the Executive Director of the TigerOne card office, and Matthew Tegen, the Director of Systems for the TigerOne card office, presented their project and discussed what they wanted to accomplish, the current status of their project, and what they have learned so far.
During a presentation given at NACCU 2017, the pair discussed the highlights and major components of the project at Clemson.
One of the goals of the project was combining four different access systems that have in place for over twenty years: Picture Perfect, Secure Perfect, Von Duprin, and Onity. Having multiple systems in place simultaneously presented certain security and safety risks, and all four systems leveraged either magnetic stripe or prox technology. “Safety is the driver – everything else takes a backseat to that. Safety is the justification for everything,” Tegen says.
Having multiple systems presented safety issues. For example, if the police have access to two or three systems and don’t have access to the fourth system, it can be a potential public safety threat if authorities can't quickly access a building.
Manual data entry posed another risk. Two of the systems, Von Duprin and Onity, leveraged the comparably less secure magnetic stripe, while Picture Perfect and Secure Perfect leverage prox. Clemson was also seeking to remove outdated systems and move toward card encryption to prevent copying. Picture Perfect was no longer receiving security updates and the IT department didn’t feel comfortable using it.
One of the first steps in the security overhaul was to determine the stakeholders in the project. One of the major stakeholders are building security coordinators.
At Clemson, each building is assigned a building security coordinator who in turn has control over cardholder groups, sets schedules on doors, controls buildings' security systems, and decides who receives access privileges. Department system administrators, the departments, students, and faculty, were also crucial stakeholders.
Once Robbins and Tegen finished defining what their project was in their project charter, they needed to create an outline and requirements for it. For this, the steering committee helped identify members for a project team that included a total of twenty people from the campus police department, academics, IT, facilities and the financial department.
“We tried to turn over every stone there was of key stakeholders and identify the essential areas that needed to be represented,” Robbins says.
Together, they created the details for the requirements of their access control system, developed a policy for the access control system, and made budget projections.
For most students at most universities, visiting the dining hall is part of the daily routine. And accessing dining services follows a fairly standard formula across the board: walk in the door, wait in line, swipe or tap your ID card at the POS, and walk in.
That’s not the case at Fremont, Nebraska’s Midland University, though, where campus administrators and food-service partner Fresh Ideas decided on a different dining hall experience. Midland deployed Lucova’s FIIT POE registers, used within the new SaaS platform solution, in the fall of 2016 and launched the accompanying mobile app at the beginning of spring 2017 semester, and the results have been seismic for the small university.
“Two years ago Midland was in need a dining service revamp,” says Jodi Benjamin, CFO of Midland University. “We had been with the same company for nearly 40 years and there was a lot of complacency, and also student demands had changed.”
The answer for Midland was a partnership with Colombia, Missouri based food-service provider, Fresh Ideas. It was Fresh Ideas, in turn, who proposed the FIIT POE register and Midland hasn’t looked back since.
A cloud-based solution, the FIIT POE (Point-of-Experience) system is a smart register that leverages communication between the mobile app on a student smartphone and the POS register itself. This communication over Bluetooth enables students to conduct a hands free check-in at the dining hall POS register without the need of a traditional card.
We wanted our dining hall to feel like an extension of home because our students enter the dining facility upwards of three times per day over nine months.
In addition to supporting traditional POS utilities, the FIIT POE platform also features a built-in messenger service to add a personal touch, the ability to adjust mobile menus, as well as analyze orders and available resources. The system integrates with existing payment processors and points of sale, and is available through a monthly pricing structure with no transaction-based costs.
The system also promises the ability to provide a fast and easy way for students to pre-order food, digitize meal cards, check account balances and freely choose between meal plan, card and cash transactions.
Midland has deployed two FIIT POE registers – one at its campus dining hall and another at its on-campus Warrior Grille location.
The change in dining service at Midland was, in part, spurred by a paradigm shift in its student population. At the university’s flagship, Fremont campus, enrollment has grown from just under 600 students in the spring of 2009 to now 1,200 students today. That growth is largely driven by a rebirth of extracurriculars – specifically athletics. In fact, some 800 of the 1,200 total enrollees are student athletes.
“We went with Fresh Ideas primarily for their desire to create a program that met our students at their needs, rather than pick a plan from a binder of pre-packaged options,” explains Benjamin. “We also wanted our dining hall to feel like an extension of home, because our students enter the dining facility upwards of three times per day over nine months.”
One of the newer trends to emerge in campus dining has been the use of reusable takeout containers in dining halls. Reusable container programs are designed to eliminate unnecessary waste tied to student use of plastic, paper or styrofoam to-go boxes.
The latest to join the trend could be Vanderbilt University where, according to a report from the Vanderbilt Hustler, the current disposable containers in dining halls are contributing to a noticeable waste problem. In an effort to boost the campus' sustainability efforts in the dining facilities, some Vanderbilt students are calling for the OZZI system and reusable containers.
The university currently only offers standard, disposable containers, and according to estimates posted by the Hustler, some 1,813,500 disposable containers and plasticware were used last year at just two of the campus' dining locations, while a third dining facility used 609,675 disposable takeaway items.
The OZZI kiosk houses the returned reusable containers, and universities can choose to leverage student ID cards to checkout and return the to-go containers. Students can return their OZZI containers at their convenience by simply feeding the to-go boxes into the OZZI kiosk. Dining staff are then left to wash, sterilize and restock the containers for the dining hall cashier to checkout to students at the till.
To start with the program, each student can be issued on OZZI credit or “token.” With that credit, students receive a to-go container, and upon returning it, are given the credit back in exchange. The process then repeats itself for every subsequent to-go container used.
According to the report, the Vanderbilt Green Fund has, do date, stumped up $150,000 to implement a wide variety of student sustainability ideas. These funds, in turn, could be used to strategically deploy two OZZI machines at campus dining halls at an estimated cost of $34,370.
The report goes on to project the break-even dates for the deployed OZZI machines to be 13 months for one location and just four months for the second dining location. Ongoing cost for maintenance and staffing requirements for the initiative is projected to reach $19,500 annually.
As the report goes on to state, however, implementing OZZI could save the university as much as $170,500 annually across both participating dining locations. Were the university to move exclusively to reusable containers, it could eliminate some 2,423,175 disposable containers and plasticware annually. A proposal has reportedly been made to the Vanderbilt Green Fund to deploy OZZI as early as next year.
It’s not unusual for tech-driven companies like Amazon to add 50,000 employees seemingly overnight. But finding the office space to accommodate that many new hires is a much more difficult task.
That’s where contactless lockers on corporate campuses enter the picture, offering much needed storage when space and time are limited.
Higher education has been a significant new market for smart lockers – and despite being relatively untapped in North America, the concept is already strong in other parts of the world.
In both the U.S. and beyond, other markets such as corporate workplaces, health clubs and ski resorts are benefiting from smart locker technology in a major way.
Corporate workplaces in particular make up an attractive segment for contactless locker technology, says Gerhard Pichler, business development manager for Gantner Technologies, which provides a range of networked smart locker systems.
In both the U.S. and beyond, corporate workplaces, health clubs and ski resorts are benefiting from smart locker technology in a major way
Gantner has deployed networked locker systems for KPMG, BNP Paribas and other Fortune 100 companies to help them increase their capacity for additional employees in their corporate offices.
Exponential work force growth has created challenges for companies in rapidly expanding verticals like the tech industry. Pichler points out that if Amazon or similar tech company wanted to add thousands of employees to serve an immediate need, they would have one of two options to support them: Find an office big enough to fit the mass of new employees, or use existing resources.
The first option is not always feasible. An office of that size would need to be built, and a construction project of that scope would take years and require sizeable capital investment.
The second option would be for the company to use its existing office space and shift to a flexible work environment. Instead of having dedicated desks, the office could provide meeting rooms, lounges and other shared workspaces where employees could choose to work. A system of smart lockers could make that scenario possible.
“More and more companies are moving away from fixed, assigned desks to a more flexible working environment, which creates the need to provide secure private storage for employees to store work documents and personal equipment,” Pichler says. “Managing the ever-increasing number of employee lockers in an efficient way across multiple buildings and departments is the new challenge.”
Corporations both in the U.S. and abroad have been using contactless locker technology to help create that kind of flexible working environment. An example of this is Erste Bank in Vienna, Austria.
Gantner has deployed networked locker systems for KPMG, BNP Paribas and others to help increase capacity for employees in corporate offices
Erste Group is one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, serving 16 million clients. For its new headquarters in Vienna, the bank needed to create a flexible office space for 4,500 employees, none of whom had an assigned desk. Instead, employees are free to choose from available workspaces ranging from freestanding desks to quiet work areas, telephone cabins or meeting rooms.
“Our goal was to create a working environment in which our employees can easily collaborate, regardless of organizational structure and develop ideas together,” says Andreas Treichl, CEO of Erste Group.
Given that employees work with sensitive financial information, the company required that every staff member have a place to lock away important documents every day.
Using Gantner’s contactless locker technology, the flexible office now is home to 7,000 networked lockers throughout its five building complexes. Employee ID cards function as locker keys, and employees can choose any available locker but cannot occupy multiple lockers at the same time. The lockers have alarms and the management system generates usage reports for system administrators.
In addition to the employee lockers, there are also personalized mailboxes in Erste Group’s mailroom that are secured by networked locks, as well as options for bicycle storage.
Pichler says the increasing demand for flexible workspaces continues to drive the demand for contactless locker technology. “Right now, this is a huge office trend, and there is a lot of investment in locking systems in the corporate market for that specific reason,” he says.
