Industry Advisory Board - The National Locksmith

Security
is
becoming
a
NO
CONTACT
Sport
RFID and
the future of
security.
by
Jake Jakubuwski
­26 • The Institutional Locksmith & Security
E
arly in my locksmith
career, I learned about
Wiegand technology, Dallas
chips, CPU boards, bar codes,
and biometrics as they related
to access control.
At the time, most Electronic
SecuriAccess Control
(EAC) systems required the
physical entry of a code via a
touchpad, the sliding of a card
with a bar code, or a magnetic
stripe on it, through a reader,
or insertion of your finger into
a “cipher” lock. With some
biometric systems you had to
place your eye against a lens
for a retinal scan.
The common denominator
found in all of the early
systems was that the systems
required that physical contact
between you, the card,
key fob or body part, and
the device had to be placed
before the “credential” could
be read and access granted
— or denied.
Today, that protocol is
changing quicker then Clark
Kent could shed his mildmannered
reporter outfit
to reveal his Superman cape
and tights!
The trend today is away
from the contact aspects of
card reading and code entry.
The rapid development of
evermore sophisticated applications
of Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) technology
is the basis of most security
platforms being offered to
our industry.
RFID is not a new concept.
The technology used in today’s
RFID units has been around
since sometime in the early to
mid 1920’s. One forerunner
of the modern RFID devices
was a transponder developed
by the British in 1938 and was
1. Caudillo’s patent drawing for his RFID transponder with memory.
2. Modern “EZPASS”
RFID units. These are the
transponders that “send’ a
signal to the receivers at the
toll booths.
used by the Allies to identify
aircraft as “friend or foe” during
the Second World War.
Most aircraft today still have
transponders that are used