The FIS Nordic World Ski Championships every two years attract athletes from around the globe to compete in more than 20 events. The 2011 World Championships ran from February 23 to March 6 in Oslo.
Nearly 600 competitors from 50 countries took part, watched by 270,000 ticket-paying spectators and more than 300,000 enthusiasts outside the arena. Attending besides were support teams and volunteers, event officials and 1,600 journalists.<br><br>In developing a physical access control system for the event, one concern was avoiding long queues. The Championships required integration of the accreditation into the overall security strategy. Finally, because of the size of the arena, the entire system had to be mobile and have the capability to be regularly updated through a wireless local area network.<br><br>After a lengthy bidding process, the FIS chose the Norway-based systems integrator lnfratek Sikkerhet AS to provide a custom-designed security system. "lnfratek Security has been working with access control systems for several decades. We have also worked together with HID Global for nearly 20 years," said Kenneth Furesund, Product Manager at lnfratek. lnfratek acted as a consultant for building access and worked with US access control product manufacturer HID on access security for the Oslo Championships.<br><br>Through the HID Connect Partner Program, HID Global introduced lnfratek to Smart Media Innovations (SMI) Ltd, the company responsible for the software part. SMI markets hardware and software, and its products are compatible with either iCLASS® 13.56 MHz or proximity-based 125 kHz systems. Together with SMI and HID, lnfratek developed a solution to meet the multiple needs of security, mobility and speed to avoid long queues. A key component was HID Global’s contactless 13.56 MHz iCLASS chip. <br><br>HID iCLASS smart card technology provided the event with mutual authentication between card and reader, encrypted data transfer, and 64-bit diversified keys for read/write capabilities.<br><br>"The integration and accreditation has been a great success for us because it has made the entire process easier," said Trygve Lauritzen, Chief of Security for the Nordic World Ski Championships. "With the chip on the card, we have much more control of the whole process."<br><br>The 1,000 A6-format identification cards that contained the HID iCLASS chip carrying various levels of accreditation provided access to the areas of the ski park as well as to the transport system.<br><br>"We looked at a solution where we could be mobile using a PDA. On this system we used handheld devices from SMI, an HID Connect Partner that we were introduced to several years ago," said Furesund. "The handheld devices from SMI ensured that the entire system was mobile and flexible."<br><br>"The PDA allows me to be anywhere on the site; it is connected through a wireless network and gets synchronised every 15 minutes," said Geir Ove Foss, Project Engineer at lnfratek. "Everyone who gets scanned also gets updated in the database. If there are a lot of people coming in, we can just send in more guards with the PDAs to scan people. The nice thing with a PDA is that I can check the person on the card with the person on the PDA to see if the identities match. If someone steals the card or manipulates the picture, I can check the PDA and see what’s wrong. The HID iCLASS chip makes this possible."<br><br>After successfully managing access control and accreditation at the Nordic World Ski Championships 2011, lnfratek, together with its partners HID Global and SMI, intends to continue to refine the system for use at future large events.
