A trusted online identity for mobile control of physical access

The world is reopening after the covid-19 pandemic and the same goes for concert halls, sports arenas, and hospitality venues. As a result, leisure travel is on the increase. Enabling a post-pandemic service and security upgrade, ZignSec and Suprema provide an enterprise-grade solution of secure, contactless, and autonomous physical access control to hotels, festival locations, sporting, and leisure venues, among others, using smartphone and online identity verification in real-time.

Digital innovation for physical access

The core components for any commercial building are security and accessibility. But the traditionally manual business models within these industries must adapt to their customers' digital lifestyle rather than just relying on manual sign-in procedures, mechanical keys, and security guards. In the fast-paced society and on-demand culture of today, easy and secure mobile control for physical access is paramount to any commercial building with the ambitions to expand its service, improve security and cut costs. As the basis for automation of hotels, apartments, hostels, and such, access control can facilitate and quicken customer access to guest rooms while freeing up staff time. Sports centres and leisure venues generally are in keeping with a paid service and often base their business dynamics on access to additional services and rooms e.g., a VIP room in a stadium or a yoga class held in a fitness centre. This calls for a flexible system that prevents intrusions, simplifies internal tasks, and improves the customer's experience without risking security.  

Mobile access control adds value

The venue and the business needs will dictate what physical access control to install and how to utilize it. Although its primary task is to increase security an access control solution can also improve the efficiency of business processes or building management. For example, allowing hotel guests to use their smartphones and mobile access for contactless entry is more convenient for the guest and efficient for the hotel. By using their mobile devices to check-in from a safe distance and using their devices as secure digital keys throughout their stay, hotel guests not only experience enhanced convenience but also welcome the ability to reduce their contact with potential shared surface risks.  

Access control is one of the biggest areas of investment in the hospitality industry and key control using mobile access is one of the easiest and most effective ways to cut costs since much time and money is spent on re-keying, changing locks, and issuing new ID cards. Smartphone credentials are, by their very nature, harder to lose and will not be shared between guests the same way key cards would. Since a guest needs to unlock their phone to use it no one can steal it to gain access to someone else's room, something that could easily be done with a traditional key card. To restrict access permission by revoking mobile access if a smartphone is lost is, in addition, more cost-effective and less resource-intensive, and time-consuming. Looking at trends and consumer behavior it seems as if a highly secure and reliable yet quick and easy to use mobile access control system for guests is becoming increasingly paramount for future success within the hospitality industry.  

ZignSec & Suprema technologies

The combined ZignSec and Suprema technologies provide an enterprise-grade solution for secure, contactless, and autonomous access control to commercial business buildings, hotels, festival locations, sporting, and leisure venues. Suprema‘s Mobile Access platform allows customers and guests to use their smartphones as a key to access secure facilities. Suprema's app Airfob Pass is the mobile access solution that enables a smartphone to be the access control credential. This is enabled with online identity verification in real-time via ZignSec's platform triggering the release of a mobile authentication token which is used for keyless entry.

Suprema Mobile Access supports both NFC (Near Field Communication) and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) for full compatibility with several types of smartphones. These two technologies enable the background and foreground to communicate with an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader seamlessly and with enterprise-grade, end-to-end encryption. Suprema Mobile Access prevents unintentional openings by precisely controlling BLE communication distance. The same technology also ensures authentication times of less than a second. The Online Identity Verification via ZignSec utilises an aggregated global network of services and is, therefore, able to ensure that the best and most accepted identification and verification schemes are being used in accordance with the national origin of the ID document. For businesses within the hospitality industry, this is a prerequisite when hosting people from all over the world.