Access control has changed more in the past twenty years than in the two centuries before it. Physical keys gave way to magnetic stripe cards, then proximity fobs, then smartphone credentials delivered over Bluetooth, and now digital wallets and biometrics are arriving in the mainstream. That pace of innovation has been good for security, good for convenience, and genuinely difficult for building owners trying to decide when to invest. The fear is straightforward and reasonable. Commit to a system today, and there is a real chance something better arrives before the hardware has paid for itself.

That fear was well founded for a long time. It is considerably less so now, because the manufacturers building this equipment have spent the last several years engineering around exactly that problem. “The locking mechanism has been around for centuries,” said Jason Newland, Business Development Manager of National Accounts and Multifamily Access Control Software at Allegion. “We just needed to create plug and play new tech that could be added onto that.” The mechanical portion of a lock is stable technology. What changes is the credential layer, the way a person proves they are authorized to open it, and modern hardware is designed to treat that layer as replaceable rather than permanent.

Allegion now produces locks with “Flex Modules,” upgradable chips in the locks that allow for technology changes as standards evolve, which means that the mechanical hardware stays in the door while future proofing an access control system. This new capability changes the economics of an upgrade decision. Replacing the electronic components inside an installed lock is a fundamentally different project than removing and reinstalling hardware across hundreds of doors, both in cost and in disruption to residents or tenants.

Technology will change, that much is inevitable. The industry is watching a potential shift from Bluetooth to real-time wifi as the primary communication protocol for access control, which would improve responsiveness and reliability but requires different radio hardware. Further out, wearables are both moving toward mainstream viability in ways that would change what a reader needs to do. With the new plug and play design even a complete change of technology can be solved with a simple chip swap.

The second misconception slowing owners down is the assumption that an upgrade means converting an entire property at once to the most advanced available technology. “People are so afraid of access control because they are worried about investing in the wrong technology,” Newland said. “The reality is that you can stairstep the improvements. You don’t have to go from lock and key to biometrics, there are lots of steps in between.” A phased approach spreads capital expense across budget cycles and, more importantly, lets an owner learn how a system performs in their building before committing to it everywhere.

The perimeter is usually a good starting point. Exterior doors and main entries carry the highest security value and affect every person who uses the building, which makes them the place where an upgrade delivers the most immediate benefit. From there, an owner can extend the upgrades into resident controlled spaces as well as into amenity spaces, common areas, and parking garages. Each phase informs the next, and problems surface at a scale where they can be corrected rather than replicated across a whole property.

Phasing also happens to be good change management. Residents and residents encounter a new credential system in one place first, learn how it works, and build comfort with it before it governs access to their own space. That gradual introduction tends to produce far fewer problems and far less resistance than a property-wide changeover.

What the right level of security actually looks like varies enough between properties that it deserves genuine thought rather than a default specification. Every building serves a different population with different expectations, and the tension is always between security and convenience. A building needs to feel safe without feeling restrictive. “People don’t want to think that any delivery person can get into their building, but they also don’t want to go down five stories to meet their DoorDash delivery driver outside the building,” Newland said. That balance is a design decision, not a technology decision, and getting it wrong in either direction produces complaints.

Resident expectations are also moving faster than many owners assume, which changes the calculus on waiting. “Students are pushing the envelope,” Newland said. “They have a lot of choices and they want the bleeding edge of tech.” Student housing has become an unusually competitive market where a dated access system is a visible disadvantage during tours. But the expectation is not limited to young residents. “Even senior housing has started to have really good adoption,” Newland said. “People of every age are really getting more comfortable using tech.” The assumption that older residents will resist mobile credentials has not held up in practice, and operators who have delayed upgrades on that basis have generally been working from an outdated read of their own population.

The logic of waiting for the next generation of access control made sense when hardware was monolithic and an upgrade meant a decade-long commitment to a single technology. That is no longer the situation. Leading access control manufacturers are building hardware with open architecture that can be upgraded as technology changes, even if that upgrade comes from a different brand. This means that the best time to upgrade any access control system is now…as long as it is designed in a way to allow interoperability that will prevent the equipment from needing to be replaced anytime soon.

The post There Is No Longer a Reason to Wait to Upgrade Your Access Control appeared first on Propmodo.

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