RFID Badge and Card vs. Mobile Credentials

RFID cards and employee badges with RFID capability are ubiquitous. When we moved into our current office, the building came equipped with an RFID card access control system. We moved in during the pandemic when all but essential staff were working from home, meaning that installing our own Teleporte access control system was a lower priority and didn’t happen for several months. We understood first-hand how much more convenient it was to never have to worry about lost or misplaced cards once we migrated to Teleporte.

At the same time, we hadn’t fully appreciated the security risks that the RFID system had. On our journey toward ISO 27001, we catalogued all our risks. Key cutters are available at local hardware stores and with locksmiths available everywhere, but most people don’t know that RFID cards are just as easy as metal keys to copy or share. Not all digital access control systems are created equal.

RFID Card Cloning kits are relatively easy to procure

Upgrading your Digitized Access

Some digital access systems are

  • much more secure than others;
  • more convenient than others to install and integrate;
  • more user-friendly for whoever needs to get in the door or the gate;
  • easier to monitor and assign access.

You may want to consider upgrading a door on RFID to mobile credentials for all these good reasons. We often recommend running both systems concurrently for a while as the users adjust to the new system. Over weeks or months, users will surrender their cards. This can facilitate a smooth change to the new system. In fact, that’s what we did at our office, which has been the first intensive real-world test of our new SLC2 Lock Controller.

Contact us if you want to discuss your access control system’s evolution. If you’d rather just tune in and listen to stories of what can happen when you don’t maintain your security systems, you may enjoy this podcast.