Welcome to Shangri-La: The Integrated RFID Asset Management Conundrum

People look for things that aren't necessarily there. What we call this proclivity generally depends on its outcome. If we never make the expected discovery, it's foolhardiness or gullibility. But if we succeed, it's genius.

Consider: Ponce de Leon leading expeditions to find the mythical fountain of youth: Gullible.

However: Nicolaus Copernicus hunting for proof until his death that the sun was the center of the solar system: Genius.

The challenge is figuring out if the object of your search is imaginary before you've wasted too much time pursuing it. This goes not only for expeditions and scientific discoveries, but for everyday business.

Many security end users once looked for a system that would alert automatically if a person tried to leave the facility with an item he shouldn't take home. But now they wonder if this system was a figment of their imaginations. Integrated RFID asset management was an up-and-coming technology not long ago, but one day it suddenly dropped out of the picture. Was it a pipe dream? If not, where is this technology now?

What Happened?
Most of the integrators, vendors and consultants interviewed for this article said without hesitation that few project specifications they see include asset management. And yet, when a recent ST&D survey asked our readers what they most wanted to learn about RFID, nearly one quarter indicated its role in asset management as their first choice.

Jim Coleman, president of SecurityNet and systems integrator Operational Security Systems, said that while there's plenty of interest in RFID asset management, the technology now available isn't reliable enough to make everybody's dreams come true. He believes end users who are currently installing such systems often do so because they need a solution and they've run out of other options. "I liken it to when your doctor tells you that you have terminal cancer. You don't like that news, so you go to get a second opinion, and the second doctor says, ?No, I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you.' So you go in for a third opinion?same thing. Finally you end up at some shady Tijuana clinic that claims it knows how to cure you. You don't go there because it's the best solution; you go there because you're desperate."

But it is tough to make everybody's dreams come true, especially when those dreams are based on false hope. Douglas Karp, general manager of the ID Products Division of Checkpoint Systems, said that when RFID for asset management first came onto the scene, end users expected a lot of it, and so did manufacturers. "If you went to the major access control shows three or four years ago, there were a lot of asset tracking people there. It was really all about asset tracking. But I think what happened is, the expectations of these products' functionality didn't meet up with reality."

If that's the case, we should look at the reality of this technology today.

What It Can Do
In its most basic form, asset tracking with RFID can let security know if company assets are walking out the door. All assets of interest are equipped with either passive or active RFID tags that communicate with readers or antenna loops built into door frames. The type of tag a system uses will determine the extent of its functionality.

Passive tags can hold a limited amount of information. When in the field of the reader, they use the power emitted by the reader to energize their own circuitry and shoot back a reply. This means the read range is limited because the tag needs a strong signal from the reader to power its response. It also means it's difficult to track several items going through a door at one time, because each one has to receive a signal, then power itself, and then return a signal, which can take more time than it takes the items to pass through the door at normal speed.

Active tags can hold significantly more information than passive tags. They power themselves through an internal battery, so they read quickly and at a longer range. They also have a better time reading multiple tags at once, though they haven't mastered this function. Batteries do run down, so active tags have a limited lifespan.

The greatest functionality of this technology comes when it's integrated with other systems. When the RFID asset management system is integrated with access control, both active and passive tags can be connected with individuals for control of mobile assets. That is, if Jane P. tries to leave the facility with a laptop or a company PDA that belongs to Paul G., the system can recognize that the asset is leaving with the wrong individual and generate an alarm.

Peter Boriskin, chief technology manager of the Access Control and Video Systems Division of Tyco Fire & Security, described the extent of automation offered by Software House's C?Cure 800 Asset Manager solution, which uses Axcess Inc.'s ActiveTags.? "We're able to color code critical alarms and add audio so that if I have a protected asset being taken out, the system would say, ?Portal 15, protected asset alert,'" said Boriskin. The system can identify who's taking the asset (if that person is a badged company employee) as well as which asset is being moved and who is supposed to have that asset.

Boriskin continued, "If it's tied in with digital video, if we have an alert we can say, ?I've got an asset that went out this particular door. Give me 30 seconds pre alarm, give me an alarm, give me a minute post alarm, and snap that as an event.' So I can immediately go back, see the person walking up to the door, going through the door and walking out, and also pop up the live video of what's going on at that portal at that time."

Leo Myers, principal systems engineer for Myers Integrated Technology LLC, has designed and installed systems that use passive tags to track assets at several locations throughout a facility. "We're scanning on and off elevators and on and off main doors. We've set up passive man traps, and if the employee badge doesn't allow that employee to take that asset out of the area, it physically stops them." The AWID and TI-RFID readers and tags in this application are integrated through a DSX access control platform. Myers also mentioned clients who are now combining hand geometry readers with asset management, so that the system can not only tell who has what asset and if that combination is authorized, but it can verify that the badged person at the reader is indeed who he says he is.

Clearly the technology is still out there, and it's being used extensively and successfully in some applications. What's holding it back?

What It Can't Do
"I think one of the reasons you're not seeing (RF for asset tracking) is the technology is too iffy," said Jerry Cordasco, vice president and general manager of Compass Technologies. "There are too many false positives and false negatives, and I think people realize that if they're going to spend a lot of money to put electronic asset tracking in place, it needs to be more reliable than that." Cordasco pinpointed two issues that have continued to plague RFID installations. "For one, the conventional technology used for these things is subject to body blocking. If you put your body between the asset and the reader, often it would never read the asset," he said. The other problem is that even many active tag systems still have trouble making sense of signals they receive when multiple assets move through a portal simultaneously. "If someone rolls a cart through a door with 15 things on it, and 14 of those things are allowed out but the 15th isn't, it's difficult for the system and the software to find that one thing."

Interference is another problem. Checkpoint's Karp explained, "A lot of times the number one asset people want to track is laptops. Well, laptops are all metal, which would interfere with the RFID, unless you put an active tag on, but they're expensive. So you'd read about the passive, low-cost RFID, and that's what you'd want, but it didn't give you the performance. And then you'd say, OK, well, I can get the performance with the active tags, but it's not going to give me a good ROI."

Below each of these concerns, there runs a unifying theme that reflects the biggest obstacle to the use of these systems for security purposes: money.

All About the Benjamins
The real question is, what are your assets, and how valuable are they? If your facility houses a significant number of high-value physical assets that can be moved, perhaps this is the best solution. But for protection of mobile workstations like laptops and PDAs, RFID is generally cost prohibitive. Taking into account the value of the physical laptop alone, a facility would have to stand at risk of losing an unlikely number of units each year to justify the expense of installing RFID to protect them. Of course, the value of the physical laptop isn't all that's at stake. "We worked with some people who were looking for a way to protect their laptops, and in the process they ended up realizing, ?It's really not the laptop I care about. It's the data on the laptop,'" Karp said. This does add more value to the equation, but RFID, or at least RFID alone, may not be the best or most reliable way to achieve this type of loss prevention.

Onward and Upward
So is integrated RFID asset management a real thing, or is it a wild goose chase? Is it foolhardiness or is it genius? Chances are, it's genius that hasn't yet found its proof; it's Copernicus before his Galileo. It seems likely that the advancements needed to improve both the cost and reliability of RFID for asset management will come from other sectors. Wal-Mart, of course, has opened a whole new avenue for RF with its new supply chain requirements, and there is plenty of room for growth in this area.

Compass' Cordasco sees a big future in RF people tracking technologies for life safety and emergency communications. Such systems would track building occupants not only as the entered and exited the building, but throughout the facility as they moved. These systems would share many of the problems of RFID asset management, with the added complexity of privacy issues. But they would have great implications for first responders, and the Department of Homeland Security is showing strong interest. "In the next three years we'll probably start seeing deployment of these systems on a limited basis. Technology tends to get thrashed out in complex projects and defense facilities, then once that happens and they realize the technology works, they start pushing the cost down." This could mean great opportunities for RFID asset management. In the meantime, the key is to stay ready for it, and the best way to do that is to invest in open systems. "We're a platform," said Karp. "If and when asset tracking comes along, it most likely will not be developed by us, but the ability to plug it into our platform will be easy. The philosophy is, make sure you have the right platform so you can add it when you want to."

Marleah Blades is managing editor of ST&D. She can be reached at [email protected].