Many large public universities are undergoing rapid expansion on a limited budget. They find themselves enrolling significantly more students, constructing new facilities and residential halls, and launching new services while still using outdated and vulnerable campus ID card systems with limited capabilities. To solve this problem and ensure their campuses remain safe and secure, universities are increasingly adopting a phased approach to replacing legacy technology with “One Card” solutions that provide better security and more efficient end-to-end issuance capabilities and connect card holders to new services and campus departments with a path to additional capabilities over time.
The Long Magstripe Legacy
Many universities have been using ID cards with legacy magnetic swipe technology for a decade or more. These cards wear out quickly and rely on a security technology that lacks the cryptographic capabilities of smart cards, making them susceptible to cloning and counterfeiting. In contrast, the latest smart card technologies provide significantly greater security and flexibility, and can be rolled out incrementally as budgets permit with an infrastructure that still supports the legacy cards.
Flexibility is a particularly important consideration for moving away from magstripe technology. One security director at a leading east coast university pointed to the increasingly diverse access control and security needs of all of the university’s departments and service operators. Demand was growing, campus-wide, for a single ID card that could be used to securely pay for meals, check out books in the library, check in and out of the gym, pay for parking, access facilities, and much more. They wanted a “One Card” environment in which a single system would allow campus IDs card to be used for many different needs, eliminating the requirement to carry multiple cards -- or cash -- for a variety of activities, services, and purchases.
Moving to contactless smart card technology delivers this One Card simplicity. It also lays the foundation for meeting the needs and expectations of today’s very technology-savvy generation of students. For administrators, it enables greater campus security along with improved efficiency and convenience in the form of a flexible solution that ensures campus IDs can be used with not only with access control systems but also for other value-added applications and services on and off campus.
Making the Change
Once they decide to move to a new and comprehensive ID solution, universities must often first acknowledge their limited budgets, the time, and cost associated with replacing existing card infrastructure and, ultimately, the logistics of re-badging tens of thousands of campus card holders
The solution is a cost-effective and comprehensive, end-to-end ID solution that enables university administrators to upgrade their existing card system over the span of multiple years. This approach ensures they can still use legacy student ID cards and the existing campus hardware as they incrementally deploy the new contactless smart cards for optimum flexibility. Key features of this solution include:
- Multi-technology readers: These versatile readers support both new contactless smart cards and legacy magnetic swipe cards, as well as wireless locks with built-in encryption and enhanced security that eliminate the cost and management headaches of metal keys.
- Card technology that delivers advanced security and interoperability between locks, readers, and multiple card applications: The latest card technology is flexible enough to be used not only for opening doors but also with desktop readers for checking out library books and paying for cafeteria meals in the cafeteria.
- ID card printers and encoders, plus card personalization software: Cards can be personalized by printing student information to the card at the same time encoding and programming of both magnetic swipe and contactless smart card technology is completed – all in a single, inline issuance process. Total issuance time is drastically reduced, data entry mistakes are eliminated, and the new ID cards are printed with higher quality and better lamination, making them more attractive, durable and longer-lasting.
Reaping the Benefits
A system with the aforementioned elements offers robust security as well as real-time control when a lock-down or other changes are needed. Administrators can quickly and easily modify their access control system, including updating card privileges, revoking and replacing lost or stolen cards, and adding or removing applications. The bottom line: they have more confidence they are delivering best-in-class security and privacy protection for students, faculty and staff, as well as more choices and applications that free card users to more easily access and enjoy so many aspects of campus life.
For instance, on one campus, the new ID cards are being used to access facilities, residence halls, and the library and cafeteria services, alongside the older magstripe ID cards as they are phased out. The security team is also looking at further improving convenience by additional more applications to the new cards, including cashless payment for the transit system, time and attendance logging for gym users, and even generating One-Time Password (OTP) soft tokens so students and faculty can use their cards to access cloud applications, data and, in the future, a variety of other services.
Convenience is also improved at the time of card issuance. According to one university official, a key goal is to get students out of the card office as quickly as possible. They want a seamless process starting with a search for the person in their database, verifying his or her identity, and printing and presenting a card that works right away. Achieving this goal requires printers and software that streamline the entire card process and enable a true one-stop shop on campus. The result is lower wait times, more durable and better-looking card, and no more hassles and cost of replacing magstripe cards that wore out so quickly. The IT manager at one university said their users also like how they can quickly tap the new cards to readers instead of having to swipe a magstripe.
Additional Sustainability Benefits
Today’s solutions can also improve sustainability. Recent ‘green’ technology advances are now allowing organizations of all types to purchase secure solutions that help protect their facilities, resources, and people - even the environment. They enable universities to solve their ID card issuance challenges while reducing energy consumption, overall waste and even save money in the process.
For instance, new ID card printers feature “wasteless” lamination technology, in which the lamination patch applied to each card as part of the issuance process is attached in a continuous stream of material on a single roll, without an underlying carrier to be discarded. This process significantly reduces both the cost of consumables and the waste product.
Other advancements in card lamination technologies have reduced the significant energy required to heat up and maintain optimal operating temperature. By leveraging advanced technologies such as "instant on" or intelligent temperature control - which will heat rapidly and maintain optimal operating temperature – new ID lamination solutions can conserve significant amounts of energy as well as save time. These energy-conscious solutions carry the GreenCircle® certification in recognition of their energy savings.
Planning Ahead
In the coming years, universities who take a future-focused approach with an incremental One Card upgrade using a multi-technology infrastructure will also have positioned themselves to take full advantage of new form factors, like mobile phones. Anything that can be done with today’s contactless smart cards can also be done on a mobile device, giving administrators the opportunity to provision mobile IDs and update access privileges over the air for the ultimate in on-the-go convenience and efficiency. With no change to their reader infrastructure, administrators will enable users to replace student ID cards with their smartphone.
About the Author:
Brett St. Pierre is the Western Regional Manager at HID Global.
