Access to data is helping organizations to bring relevant change to how they work. Sensors and other powered devices provide data points for insights into improved energy efficiency, enhanced occupant comfort, and the impact of light on different building zones over the course of a workday. Smart building technology can allow in more passive light into a space to add brightness by simply raising automated window shades. It can also adjust external sun sails or shade panels to allow more or less light into a room to heat or cool it.
The other side of the coin is smart building technology is going beyond the devices themselves and adapting to how people work in a changing environment. This includes when an operation needs to adjust its space to the current business priorities.
Adaptive cable distribution when paired with smart building technology allows facilities teams to easily move secure areas while maintaining access limitations.
Biometric door locks and high-definition security camera systems are easy to relocate across the workplace optimized for connectivity. Flexible security gives organizations the options they need to reconfigure, grow, prioritize, and stay lean.
Biometric Locking Devices
Available in a range of options, biometric access devices use fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition, and authentication technologies, such as palm vein authentication and more. They allow organizations to choose the right level of security for each area of the business.
These technologies work for room access and computer access. They allow security teams to track the identity of associates accessing secure areas and change permissions in real-time to meet the current needs, all from one centralized control panel.
These technologies keep intellectual property and financial data safe. They also provide better security for occupants and other property. Access controls policies are more easily tracked through connected devices and keep organizations in compliance with insurance mandates, protecting assets, and ensuring peace of mind.
A Deeper Understanding Of Smart Building Security Technology
Often in IoT discussions, the narrative centers on sensors, systems, and building management platform data collection, analysis, and management. Biometric security provides a valuable place in smart building technology.
Fingerprint Identification Technology
There are two types of fingerprint scanners–optical and capacitive. The optical scanner shines a bright light over the fingerprint and takes a digital photo. A light-sensitive microchip constructs the fingerprint’s digital image’s ridges and valleys, turns them into 1’s and 0’s, and creates the user’s code.
The capacitive fingerprint scanner, the type found on most cell phones, uses an electrostatic field to create a digital image. Tiny capacitor array circuits detect the ridges and valleys of the fingerprint. The contact from the ridges charges the plate while the valleys leave the plate unchanged.
Iris Scanning Technology
The iris scanner recognizes an iris by illuminating it with invisible infrared light. It registers unique patterns that are not visible to the naked eye. It also analyzes lines and colors within the iris to extract a pattern, encoding the information. Scans automatically shut off, minimizing risk.
Devices come in a variety of implementations, including outdoor, long-range, and compact versions. They also come in a single eye and dual eye scan for added security.
Facial recognition and authentication
Experts predict the facial recognition market to grow to $7.7 billion in 2022. The popularity of facial recognition technology lies in its potential variety of commercial applications. Organizations use it for everything, from surveillance to marketing.
Facial recognition technologies use recognition software to scan the dimensions of a human face. The facial recognition relies on biometrics to map facial features. These systems compare images from photographs or videos with the database information of known faces to find a match.
Though facial recognition can help verify personal identity, it also raises privacy issues in some settings. The identification sequence is as follows.
Step 1. The camera captures a picture of a face from a photo or video. A face might appear alone or in a crowd. An image may show the subject looking straight ahead or in a near profile.
Step 2. Facial recognition software scans the facial geometry detecting key factors that include facial proportions. These parameters include the distance between the eyes and between the forehead and chin. The software uses facial landmarks, up to 68 different factors, to distinguish a facial signature.
Step 3. A facial signature is a mathematical formula the system uses to compare a face to a database of known faces. The faces of at least 117 million Americans appear in one or more police databases. As of May 2018 report, the FBI has had access to 412 million facial images for searches.
Step 4. The technology determines if a face is recognizable. A faceprint may match that of an image in a facial recognition system database.
Palm vein authentication
Palm vein identification technologies provide a high level of accuracy. They are easy to implement, using non-intrusive and contactless readers.
Not requiring physical contact also ensures proper hygiene within the workplace. Like fingerprints, veins have many differentiating features. Any attempts to forge an identity using vein patterns would be challenging, if not impossible. Because veins are not visible to the naked eye, they provide a high level of security.
This unique approach to biometric authentication technology uses pattern recognition of veins and has proven to be one of the most accurate biometric authentication solutions currently available.
Smart Building Technologies Provide Flexibility
The adaptive approach to smart building IoT solutions is to implement biometric security devices and systems in new locations within a building to support the changing needs within a space. Having the opportunity for reconfiguration keeps an organization lean. If there is anything the COVID shutdown has taught facilities managers, it is the value of readiness.
One thing that does not change, however, is the need to protect intellectual property, valuable assets, and to maintain continuity.
Adaptive workplace technologies help organizations leverage the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of smart solutions. Gridd® low-profile raised floor and Gridd® power support the kind of flexibility needed to transform a workspace as business priorities shift.
To learn more about flexible raised floor systems, reach out to one of the advisors at FreeAxez.
