London, February 2018 — The new Aperio® H100 packs the power and flexibility of wireless access control into one slim, cleverly designed door handle. With easy retrofitting to almost any interior door and comprehensive RFID compatibility, the new Aperio® H100 handle makes extending access control to more doors cost-effective by integrating with a vast range of third-party systems.

The Aperio® H100’s stylish design is perfect for indoor office and facility doors. The Aperio® H100 can work within an online access control system or offline as a standalone device. A battery fits inside the handle, ensuring a minimal footprint and a discreet look to gel with any contemporary door style. The Aperio® H100 is easy to retrofit on existing doors, with no drilling and no wiring required. Any existing mechanical cylinder can still be used.

The Aperio® H100 is specified with maximum flexibility and designed to fit almost any format of interior door. The Aperio® H100 is compatible with most common European (DIN) and Scandinavian mortise locks, in wooden, steel, tubular frame or glass doors with standard lock cases. It comes in left- and right-hand versions for a door between 35mm and 80mm thickness, with optional U-handle and USB adaptor.

The Aperio® H100 is compatible with multiple RFID technologies, including iCLASS®/ISO14443B, iCLASS® SE, Seos®, MIFARE® Classic, Plus and EV1, and DESFire® SE.

“Like all Aperio® devices, our new handle can upgrade site security for a very affordable price,” says Matthias Weiß, Product Manager Aperio® at ASSA ABLOY EMEA. “The Aperio® H100 further extends a range which adds access control wirelessly to exterior and interior doors, from fire and safety doors with regulatory requirements to meeting rooms, labs and offices.”

The new Aperio® H100 handle completes a comprehensive range of Aperio® wireless access control devices that already includes online and offline Aperio® cylinders (C100/C900) and escutcheons (E100/E900); an online and offline lock (L100/L900); and a wireless lock for bringing server racks and cabinets (KS100) into the same access control system as doors. To discover more about how Aperio® enhances security and convenience at any premises, you can watch a short film at www.assaabloy.co.uk/aperiowirelesslocks.

London, August 2018 – Most modern employers want to make their workplace into a more responsive, more flexible environment. Upgrading security offers a major quick win. While frustration is part of the package with old-fashioned locks and mechanical master-keys, wireless access control — including SMARTair® — is designed around security, control and convenience.

1. Be more productive. Adding wireless access control makes workplace security flexible and responsive. It’s easy to create access time schedules for different user groups. So, if your cleaners should access only after office hours, SMARTair® access control system can handle it. If a team relocates, it’s easy to change their access permissions en masse — and with zero interruptions to everyone’s workflow. The bundled SMARTair® admin software makes it easy to achieve all this (and more) from an intuitive interface.

2. Spend money wisely. How much of your budget gets eaten managing mechanical keys? With SMARTair®, you can forget about keys altogether, replacing them with easily programmable smart-cards. You don’t need to change your doors or pay for expensive cabling. Should the CEO lose her key-card, cancelling it and issuing a replacement is simple, almost free and instantaneous. Battery-powered, wireless locks also deliver ultra-low energy consumption compared to traditional wired access locks. And with SMARTair®, your investment is protected: you can expand your system at any time, or upgrade its functionality, without having to begin again from scratch.

3. Make staff happier. Happy staff are more loyal and more productive. With its focus on user experience, SMARTair® banishes everyday frustrations. It’s easy for managers to program just the right level of access for freelancers and contractors. Facilities staff could open doors remotely or get a real-time site security overview. Employees can use their SMARTair® access card for the canteen, vending machines, changing room locker locks and even the photocopier. And with the new Openow™ app from SMARTair®, you don’t even need a key-card (or to wonder where you left it).

4. Create the right impression. With SMARTair® and the Openow™ app, employees and visitors can open authorized doors with their mobile phone. Facility managers can issue virtual keys to anyone who needs them — and revoke them whenever they choose, or set them to expire automatically at a certain time. No more plastic key-cards means there’s no need for a card activation terminal on reception or elsewhere, and no need for your visitors to hang around waiting. You just send them a time-limited virtual key ahead of the visit. With Openow™, if you have your phone, you are already carrying your keys.

5. Maintain your aesthetics. There’s a SMARTair® wireless lock to fit pretty much any door. Battery-powered escutcheons and cylinders fit wood, glass, emergency exit and fire doors, and there are wall readers for high-traffic entrance doors, barriers and lifts. Because SMARTair® devices come in a subtle, contemporary design — no clunky wired doors — they have proved attractive enough for high-spec co-working spaces and prize-winning architecture; and robust enough for a hectic university campus.

The complete SMARTair® solution includes wireless escutcheons, cylinders, wall readers, locker locks and more; the intuitive SMARTair® TS1000 software; and the enhanced new Openow™ app management functionality. It’s all easy to install — and even easier to operate.

You can transform your workplace with SMARTair® wireless locks and download a free brochure at: campaigns.assaabloyopeningsolutions.eu/openow

London, November 2018 – Mobile access control will increasingly keep pace with modern mobile working, says Thomas Schulz, Director Marketing and Communications, Digital and Access Solutions at ASSA ABLOY EMEA

In a world where we never stop moving, it makes sense that mobile technology is everywhere. This includes almost all workplaces. By 2016, 94% of European large businesses were providing workers with connected mobile devices, according to official EU statistics. And they are using them for more than just email. Recent Criteo research suggests 39% of online travel agency bookings now come via a mobile phone. I could cite many similar statistics: The growth of “mobile-first” cuts across industries.

Yet there is a workplace function where mobile phones are the exception: access control. The technology exists, for sure. Mobile seems a natural fit for convenient security. The device you carry everywhere — the smartphone — can replace a separate RFID card. The mobile phone is at the centre of many exciting innovations in access control.

So why does the physical credential still reign supreme in offices and commercial buildings?

Lift-off for mobile?

As a new report on the access control industry identifies, mobile phones have not made predicted progress in replacing the plastic smart-card — at least, not yet.

According to the Wireless Access Control Report 2018: “Where access control is concerned, security departments have historically been tasked with fulfilling two major tasks as inexpensively as possible: tracking time and attendance; and preventing unauthorised entry.

“Rightly or wrongly, cards, fobs and keycodes are seen as fulfilling these jobs adequately. Security professionals are unwilling to jeopardise security by adopting innovations perceived as unproven.”

Research supports the notion of wary security managers. One European Commission Digital Transformation Monitor report suggests 51% of businesses with a BYOD policy believed they had suffered some kind of mobile security breach. Device manufacturers including Lenovo note the growth of CYOD as a potential remedy.

These reservations about mobile phone access are well rehearsed. Yet using a mobile phone instead of a smart-card also has advantages. How quickly would you notice if you lost your work access card? Everyone is more careful with their precious handset. And if a phone is stolen, password, pattern and fingerprint ID security can prevent a thief from gaining entry to premises, or even to the phone itself.

Student halls of residence, for example, can expect a significant uptick in site security from mobile phone credentials. Few students would instantly notice a missing smart-card; almost none survive for long without their mobile.

Phones can also be protected with biometrics much more cheaply than whole premises. “Rather than having to add biometric capture devices in or alongside readers, the phone itself can easily be used as a capture device for face or voice (or both), with comparison and matching done locally on the phone or centrally,” David Anthony Mahdi, research director at Gartner, said in 2017. “This approach also mitigates the risks from an attacker who gains possession of a person’s phone.”

Phones open new possibilities for keeping credentials up-to-date without the need for separate readers or a return-to-base. To take one example, the new SMARTair® Openow™ solution enables security managers and site users to manage virtual keys inside a secure app. If a security admin cancels a virtual key, it vanishes immediately from a user’s Openow™ app. These virtual keys can be created and sent from anywhere. Facility managers can check and amend every virtual key’s access rights whenever they want, and wherever they are.

Students and staff at the new $100 million Arkansas State University campus in Queretaro, Mexico, are already reaping the benefits of Openow™. With no access cards to collect or validate, every user installs and validates their app and collects keys virtually. It’s secure and convenient.

Getting rid of physical credentials has these concrete advantages. It also helps to project a contemporary image for your business — perhaps why the SMARTair® solution attracts major interest from the fast-growing, design-conscious co-working and shared office sector. When Openow™-equipped phones replace plastic key-cards, there’s no need for a card activation terminal at reception. Access feels slicker.

Mobile solutions for mobile workers

These advantages foreshadow a brighter future for phone-based credentials. By 2020 Gartner predicts 20% of organisations will use smartphones for access, in place of plastic smart-cards. These same positives outweigh those surmountable issues with mobile access. Perhaps, too, they explain why mobile solutions keep winning industry awards. ASSA ABLOY’s mobile solution CLIQ® Connect has been a winner at the Detektor International Awards, recognizing outstanding innovation in security alarms, access control and CCTV. It also won the Gold Trophy at France’s APS Awards and Protector & Wik’s Golden Protector Award 2018.

In many sectors, mobile credentials are now expected to spread fast. IHS Markit’s senior analyst Jim Dearing writes: “The end users most likely to transition to a full mobile credential-only system are those who have to deal with large numbers of temporary visitors or who experience exceptionally high card turnover rates. Examples include building sites at which contractors require access to varying locations, as well as universities and hotels where large numbers of cards have to be replaced each year.”

Solutions for mobile workers are amenable to smartphone-based access; this exact constituency is a focus for CLIQ® Connect. With this mobile-first extension to the CLIQ® mechatronic access control system, a key-holder no longer needs to update access rights physically in person. All they need is a smartphone and the CLIQ® Connect app. To change a key-holder’s access permissions, an admin accesses the CLIQ® Web Manager — from anywhere — and updates it. A key-holder makes an encrypted connection between their programmable Bluetooth® key and the app to instantly update permissions from the cloud.

As well as saving companies’ administration costs, CLIQ® Connect boosts security, because in the event of a lost key, access authorizations can be deleted instantly. Shorter (i.e. safer) access validity timeframes no longer disrupt everyone’s work.

Only mobile technology gives facility managers the ability to react at such speed. Hats off to the longevity of the RFID card. But the future’s brighter and faster… and mobile.

You can download the full “Wireless Access Control Report 2018” from https://campaigns.assaabloyopeningsolutions.eu/wacreport2018

London, November 2018 – In the booming workspace market, a professional welcome is crucial to success. At Barcelona’s Gran Vía Business Centre, 2,500m2 of offices and shared collaborative workspaces in the heart of the city, managers chose SMARTair® wireless access control system — because it protects and manages their premises, and also projects the right image for a contemporary co-working environment.
Gran Vía is a flexible and well-equipped home for companies from international corporates to local start-ups. Fibre optic broadband, LED lighting, an on-site restaurant and adjacent rental apartments are also part of Gran Vía’s high-end service. This is why they sought an upgrade and replacement for an existing, out-of-date access control system.

Gran Vía needed more flexibility and control over access to their premises; a system to seamlessly manage diverse access needs of permanent versus temporary users, and that would cope with rapid personnel turnover. Locking devices must complement the professional, modern image of the workspace, which attracts high-profile, design-savvy business clients. On top of these demands, any new system would have to be fitted without disrupting day-to-day business.

SMARTair® delivered
SMARTair® access control locks now control access to Gran Vía’s six floors of offices, meeting spaces and communal areas. Access requirements change all the time at the business centre, and security managers now have a system where programming and reprogramming access rights is fast and easy. Thanks to the slick, flexible management software behind SMARTair®, everything works in the background — keeping site users safe almost without anyone noticing.

“SMARTair® is an effective solution that is easy to use,” says Esther Portillo, Marketing Director at Gran Vía Business Centre.

Over 50 new SMARTair® wireless escutcheons are operated with RFID smart-cards, so security is not compromised if an office user loses their credential. Security administrators simply cancel the lost credential’s access rights — much quicker, cheaper and more professional than replacing a traditional mechanical lock. The user gets their new smart-card validated at one of five SMARTair® wall updaters: it is the perfect combination of contemporary image and efficient user experience for Gran Vía’s clients.

Importantly, SMARTair® wireless door and wall devices complement Gran Vía’s contemporary aesthetic. “SMARTair® has a modern design and suits our installations perfectly,” confirms Esther Portillo. Bringing more doors into any installed SMARTair® system is straightforward, because SMARTair® escutcheons fit wood, glass, emergency exit and fire-resistant doors.

Gran Vía now has an access control system they can reconfigure and expand to suit both their needs and their clients’.