US manufacturers Honeywell and HID Corp signed an agreement that expands their partnership to provide access control card and reader products to the security industry.
As part of the agreement, Irvine-Calif.-based HID will supply Honeywell with contactless access control card and reader products. Honeywell also will develop new products based on HID’s iCLASS technology to offer enhanced security through encryption, mutual authentication and easier biometric implementation.
Under their previous partnership established in the late 1990s, Honeywell and HID provided the industry with 125 kHz proximity card and reader products. This new agreement extends HID’s license to Honeywell for producing low-frequency products, as used by the OmniProx product line, and expands the relationship between the two companies to include HID’s iCLASS 13.56 MHz contactless smart cards and readers.
“This is a partnership that has been successful in the past, and we know it can work even better in the future,” said Terry Neely, vice president of Engineering for Honeywell Access Control Systems. “Through this agreement, both companies will work together to bring a better product to the marketplace.”
Card and reader products based on contactless smart card technology products are used in a variety of facilities such as government buildings, large corporations, airports, hospitals and college campuses, the firms report. Among other things, they can be used to control doors and operate vending machines and laundromat equipment. Other uses range from library management to biometric verification.
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“The addition of HID’s iCLASS smart card technology into Honeywell’s access control product line represents tangible benefits for our mutual customers,” said Denis Hébert, HID’s president. “It brings an expanded menu of card and reader options, including multi technology cards to enable site migration, and provides the technology platform to enable the many application solutions available from iCLASS application developers.”
HID’s iCLASS cards and readers offer features such as cryptographic data storage, mutual authentication, secure reading and writing of data and user-definable access keys. iCLASS technology significantly reduces the risk of compromised data or duplicated cards, it is claimed.
“This partnership fits right in line with Honeywell’s strategy of working with companies like HID that have standardized products that we, in turn, can add value to by integrating them into our overall system,” Neely said.
