HID and the End of the Office Security Lanyard

Have you ever rushed into the office, already running late, only to realise your office security landyard or pass is sitting on the kitchen bench or in a different handbag? Your day turns to custard. You have to be manually signed in, and it takes forever because nobody is answering their phones.

I am a chronic security pass loser. I hate the feel of a lanyard around my neck, so I take it off and leave it behind. When I worked in the city at CoreLogic and at News Corp, I was the queen of losing my pass. But I always had my phone.

Which is exactly the point Steve Katanas made when he joined me on The Proptech Podcast. Steve is head of ANZ for Physical Access Control at HID, a manufacturer of secure identity products and services. Its technology is used to open doors, enter countries and validate people on networks, via smart cards, mobile IDs and passports. If you carry a New South Wales driver's licence, it was printed using HID technology.

The problem hiding in plain sight

Physical passes are a friction we have all quietly accepted as the cost of working in a commercial building. But add them up. The forgotten card. The manual sign-in. The half hour after a client coffee spent finding someone to let you back through the barriers. And the queue: it is a traffic jam, where one or two people rummaging through their bags at the turnstile back up the whole lobby.

Why the phone wins

Steve's pitch for a digital credential is disarmingly simple. "The strongest value proposition for a digital credential is that nobody ever forgets their phone," he told me.

He is right. We have already trained ourselves to keep everything else in the wallet: movie tickets, plane tickets, bank cards. As Steve put it, the access pass is no longer exotic: "It's almost now a question of why can't I be in the wallet?"

Convenience is only half the story. The bigger shift happens on the organisation's side. "I don't need to go chasing you to find your physical card," Steve said. "I can remotely remove that credential from your phone over the air." Issue remotely, revoke remotely.

What I found most interesting is what happens once a business makes the switch. Steve says customers start asking a better question: where do I actually need to authenticate? The door, the turnstile, the lift, the right floor, a secure print release. Instead of multiple cards for multiple systems – what Steve calls "the old prison guard effect where you've got a key chain on the side with 300 keys" – those systems can be unified behind one credential, extending to car parks and to offices in other countries.

Credentials are also bundled into company or tenant experience apps. You need the credential to get through the door, which means the employer now has a channel to share information or let you book meeting rooms. The pass becomes the front door to a relationship with the building.

Where Australia actually sits

I asked Steve whether we are early adopters or laggards. His answer was refreshingly honest: "I think we're both." A small slice of the market jumps on new technology, tests it and adopts it; everyone else waits until the user experience is at 100 per cent.

HID has been selling mobile access in Australia for seven years, and Steve says the conversation has flipped from outbound education to inbound enquiry. We are not fully digital, but physical credential numbers are falling and the transition, in his words, has begun in earnest. COVID played its part: demand for a minimised-touch approach forced a rethink of how organisations provision employees, visitors and contractors.

And on the question everyone asks – what if I lose my phone? – most systems require you to authenticate to the phone before the credential can be used. A dropped plastic card can just be picked up and tapped.

Why ending office security landyard matters for Australian property

The part that genuinely excites me is the data. HID is developing location-based services using the beacon functionality in its readers, augmented with Wi-Fi, to tell building owners where people are within their assets at any point in time. Proof of presence has always been in strong demand in commercial buildings, particularly for evacuations, and has historically been handled with varying success.

Do that well and you are not solving a lanyard problem. You are feeding real occupancy insight into how buildings are designed, how floors are used and what tenant experience should look like. For owners under pressure to justify office space, that is a more valuable conversation than door hardware.

Steve was clear that HID is not chasing residential – you can buy a fingerprint lock at the big green shed today – and stays focused on commercial, industrial and healthcare. What it is chasing is proptech partners, offering APIs and SDKs so specialists can build for the verticals they know best.

The reflective bit

Most proptech stories are about big, obvious problems. This one is about a small, universal friction we have all decided to live with, and that is often where the best returns hide. So if you still require everyone entering your building to carry a plastic pass, it may be time to upgrade. Your team will always have their phones with them – think of the productivity savings.

More from this episode: read the show notes or read the full transcript.