From locking to smart access
When you mention locking, the first thing that probably jumps into your head are locks and keys and how you can keep people out of your properties.
For more than two decades, iLOQ has focused on access management. This means creating solutions that help people move quickly and more efficiently around the places they live and work, while also ensuring that we keep the bad guys out. iLOQ’s form of access management is digital, it’s smart, cost effective and it’s really sustainable.
Step one – the digital key
We recognized a long time ago that traditional physical keys were a security risk. They could easily be shared with an unauthorized person, copied, lost, stolen or simply unreturned when someone moved out of a property or changed jobs.
Our first innovation was a digital key where all the access rights a person needed were programmed to it. In the home environment, that meant that residents needed only one key to access the main door of their building, their apartment, the warehouse, garage, gym, waste room, etc. etc. The key could not be copied, and its access rights could be increased as more facilities were added to the property. More importantly, the key could be immediately blocked if it was lost, stolen or unreturned. This eliminated the time and high costs involved with changing the entire locking system and reissuing keys to maintain a secure environment.
iLOQ’s digital keys have been widely used not only in residential properties, but also in commercial and municipal buildings, schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure sites. There are other digital keys in the market, but iLOQ is unique in that it is battery-free and needs no external source of electricity or WiFi connection. The power to recognize its access rights and open a lock comes from the motion of pushing the key into the lock – genius!
Step two – smartphone access
We all have keys. If you’re lucky enough to live or work in a place that has iLOQ, you will know that one key is enough. Gone are the days of carrying around huge bunches of keys. That’s a huge advantage if, for example, you are a technician needing to get access to a large number of critical infrastructure sites, often in remote locations, on a daily basis. You don’t have the time to guess which key is the right one.
But hang on. What do you see when you look around you today? Smartphones… everywhere. People are glued to them. They use them not only for making calls, but also, for example, to search the internet, play games, watch films, and make payments. So, how about we get rid of physical keys and use the NFC functionality of a smartphone to also get access. Smart, right?
With iLOQ’s solution, access rights are sent remotely and in real time to an app running on the smartphone. Just hold the phone against the iLOQ lock. The NFC induction of the phone creates the power to check if you have the correct access rights and open the lock. Nice.
So, now we’ve done away with batteries and physical keys. It just keeps getting better and better.
Step three – smart-access platform
At iLOQ, we have many stakeholders, and we are laser focused on each and every one.
It’s not only the end users who need more security and a smarter way of going about their daily lives. We also need to look at the building owners. They need to create the perfect environment for residents or employees while driving costs down and fulfilling sustainability goals. And, with increasing urbanization, locking system administrators need to find ways to reduce the time, cost and hassle of managing access.
We’ve introduced our smart-access platform which is a range of digital services and software solutions that are making everyone’s lives easier, smarter, more secure, convenient, sustainable and cost effective. With our smart-access platform, we consider ourselves at the very forefront of what we like to call the smart-locking revolution. You can read more about it here.
But please note. This isn’t a product launch; this is a platform that is constantly evolving, taking into account both new challenges and opportunities, to make the world a safer and smarter place. Watch this space!
