CARMEL, IND., September 19, 2013 – Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies today announced that it has been approved as a Silver partner in the Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program (SEAP). SEAP was created as an ecosystem for Samsung to provide better support to its various partners. Enterprise solutions, such as Ingersoll Rand’s aptiQmobile web-based credential management system, are an integral part of Samsung’s go-to-market strategy. As an Independent Solution Vendor (ISV), Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies can leverage Samsung’s extensive global sales and marketing network in the mobile industry to promote the use of aptiQmobile on Samsung Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled smartphones, letting owners use their own Samsung smartphones to grant access to buildings.
“This is a big breakthrough for organizations hoping to leverage NFC-enabled smartphones as security credentials,” said Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies Director of Technology Alliances Diane Kehlenbeck. “Samsung is one of the world’s leading smartphone providers and, as such, is very important to the future success of phone-based access control credentials.”
NFC provides simplified transactions, data exchange and wireless connections between two devices that are in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a couple of inches. A smartphone that contains an embedded NFC chip can send encrypted data a short distance ("near field") to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than presenting their actual credit card.
NFC technology within smartphones can also be used in the same fashion as a smart card for access control and other applications such as logical access control, secure printing, cashless vending and more. To turn a Samsung smartphone into an access control credential, one would simply download the aptiQmobile app from Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, the web-based credential management system then sends access control credentials over the air to the NFC-enabled mobile devices. To enter a building, users simply open the aptiQmobile app and tap their phones to the aptiQ smart reader on the wall in the same way that they would present their ID badge.
