Brivo Mobile Pass Opens Any Door by Smartphone

If anything were to takeoff from a smartphone and CA (Card Access) credential perspective, I would vote for BLE as the technology is already built into the phone. Integrating BLE alongside a proximity reader would be low cost in my opinion. Essentially, you would install an app on the phone that would be authenticated during the enrollment process. The app would take the IMEI number and convert it to a CA Credential. Once in range of the BLE network, the phone would join the network; when presented a couple of inches to the reader in where the received signal strength were to be anywhere from 0dBm to -5dBm it would transmit the CA Credential encrypted via BLE.

Additional passes are available at $15 for 100. Given that this is effectively ~15 cents per user, this is fairly inexpensive especially compared to issuing iClass cards which can 10x or more than the mobile pass.

It seems you can look at this as "inexpensive", or "rather pricey for enabling an HTTPS call".

There is also the HID Mobile Access which works with both BLE and NFC , but they sell a reader for that, albeit not that expensive one...we just started with that and it looks good so far.

Now, Brivo has announced a new way of doing this that sidesteps the hassle, and claims to work with any door, any reader, and the majority of all smartphones in seconds.

Any reader, or just the ones that are already integrated into Brivo?

I am really surprised by the results of the poll, over half feel that mobile credential is a bad idea is interesting. I would be curious to know why most people feel it is a bad idea vs. good idea.

infinias has had this as a product for some time now and we have several sites that utilize it and love it...

For example, with Brivo's Mobile Pass, a user could open any door at any time from anywhere that they are authorized for.

I could see this being used from inside the building as well, to let people in, instead of going to meet them. Whether that is desirable is another matter.

Wondering what the latency/reliability issues are with the Internet and the cloud deal. Being locked outside a building for any length of time because the cloud/Internet connection is down I imagine is a memorably bad experience.

Of course they have this issue with their current systems, but now they are adding another seperate internet connection over 4G to the mix.

Wondering what the latency/reliability issues are with the Internet and the cloud deal. Being locked outside a building for any length of time because the cloud/Internet connection is down I imagine is a memorably bad experience.

Of course they have this issue with their current systems, but now they are adding another seperate internet connection over 4G to the mix.

What do you mean they have this issue with current systems? What issue?

infinias' Mobile Credential was launched in 2013 with the view that there was a better way to use a smartphone for access control than just reproducing the old card/reader interaction, we think it's great that Brivo has joined us.

The article stated you can do a 'manual unlock', and it's very easy to use that as shorthand for what the app does. But, that's not what we do, we've been very careful to make sure that our technology is secure from both an encryption perspective and what goes on the phone to be hacked or spoofed. With Mobile Credential the phone doesn't know how to do a manual unlock, it only knows how to present a credential to the system and let the system do all the decision making. I would imagine Brivo has done something similar as well.

The documentation quoted is accurate, in an internal installation, you can choose to give some users the internal IP and limit them to wifi proximity to the building (more secure), and others a public IP, allowing them to grant access from anywhere. On the cloud solution we're announcing at ASIS, this will of course only have the public IP option.

What doesn't come out very well with infinias, and we need to get better at publicizing this, is that you can implement all sorts of other functionality through the infinias mobile credential app - lock down, first in, arming, etc. via our rules engine, this is stuff we teach our certified guys in training.

Disclosure - We are a Brivo Dealer. We tried Brivo Mobile Pass on Friday afternoon. I think the solution is very intriguing and pricing is not a barrier. The speed performance was nearly instantaneous - almost no lag. Also, the entry in the activity log captures each use in detail.

Will we offer it to customer - yes. Initially perhaps for multi-tenant situations - lots of churn - where not having to get the user a physical object could be beneficial. Or perhaps as guest passses. Later for other customers with "higher" security concerns, maybe when the geo-fencing feature is available.

One feature I like is not having to leave NFC and Bluetooth on my phone all the time - just one more battery killer.

I could image a small installation at some point in the future where we didn't even put card readers on all the doors!