Shane Butler, PSP, CPP, Vice President of Sales EMEA for Alert Enterprise discusses how the access control market is shaping up in 2024.

What trends are we seeing in access control?

We’ve entered a new and exciting era of frictionless mobile workplace access.

Near-field communication (NFC) wallet mobile credentials solutions have opened doors (quite literally) to easier, quicker and more secure access through Apple and Google Wallet.

This means safer access to our corporate spaces, secure printing, logical access to the network and even mobile-powered snack time at the office vending machine… the use cases are endless and go beyond anything that’s possible using plastic badges.

If sustainability is a priority, the enormous potential reduction in plastic waste is an instant business driver. 

A keytrend right now is generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI).

For security, Gen AI unlocks vast quantities of valuable physical access control data that has been hiding in plain sight.

This can be used for game-changing security insights, improving end user experiences and even revenue generation – allowing security to instantly become a business enabler.

Gen AI has the capability to aggregate data that was uncontrolled and make it highly useful and easy to access.

This can also lead to personalized recommendations – when we think about access control, we would traditionally think about opening and closing doors but there has been a convergence that has created more of a focus on the experience of end users.

Now, it’s not just about going through a door but it’s about a positive and seamless workplace experience for employees, contractors and visitors.

Gen AI leverages powerful natural language processing (NLP) models, which allows users to engage with products like security chatbots in a more human-like and conversational way.

No more complicated manual reports, just ask the chatbot a question and receive the useful data instantly – without training.

How does Alert Enterprise stay on top of access control trends?

For nearly 15 years we’ve been the pioneers of security convergence between the physical and digital worlds.

We’re seeing this become the new approach at leading companies. 

Our customers provide us with so much inspiration and are constantly feeding back into what is a very agile development methodology.

Their challenges fuel us to develop highly configurable and broadly applicable solutions that address total workforce access, security and safety while making security a true business enabler.

Additionally, we have a really strong partner ecosystem, keeping us connected with megatrends like cloud, AI, identity, access control and beyond.

These include partners in the IT space like ServiceNow and SAP, to mobile access partners like HID, Wavelynx and Safetrust.

Why do your customers trust you?

As the world continues to work its way out of an economic inflationary period, business leaders are hyper-focused on driving down costs, while boosting employee productivity and efficiency.

The value we bring to a customer’s environment is that we allow them to leverage the infrastructure they already have.

No rip and replace.

We’re a software platform that sits on top of their current systems, including their access control software and readers.

We help to maximize their ROI through automation and efficiency, with typical business value metrics like 75-100% automation of identity and access request/tickets, with customers like Bank of America that manages an astonishing ~150 access requests per hour.

We have also built into our platform industry-specific components allowing users to automatically comply with mandates.

For example, financial services, healthcare and utilities are highly regulated industries and have specific requirements around privacy, data privacy and access.

We call them industry content packs; they’re developed from partnering with industry leaders across verticals, allowing new customers in those spaces to automatically configure their platform to their industry regulations.

The last component is that we can provide a connection into other systems that are important for customer environments, like HR management systems.

Some of our customers are seeking a way to transform their HR initiatives and really streamline the onboarding and offboarding process at scale and we provide instant value.

How will the market continue to evolve?

The convergence of cybersecurity, physical security and risk management is well on its way and as such, physical security will begin to adopt mature and validated logical access control and security models such as zero trust and governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

These are very established ways of managing identities and access in the digital world.

Due to the rapidly increasing adoption of cyber-physical convergence, I think we will see even more of this approach within physical access control.

At Alert Enterprise, we believe that we’re the only platform that truly unifies enterprise physical access with critical IT systems for a converged, software-first and identity-centric approach to credentials, access and permissions across an organization.

If there’s one thing that you would like our readers to take away, what would that be?

I would emphasize how much we drive innovation.

Alert Enterprise literally brought the term cyber-physical convergence to the market.

That’s the difference; we are the leaders out there.

I’ll end with a call to action: there are those who aren’t thinking of security in a siloed way and they’re the ones that are able to really innovate and align security with the core business needs within their companies.

I encourage physical security leaders to think outside the box, start thinking about where the trends are going and to reach out to Alert Enterprise.

We would love to partner with you and support you along your digital transformation journey.

This article was originally published in the Special February Influencers Edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.