On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 9:11 AM, Tom Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm in the market for a new badge system.
Don't buy anything from Honeywell/Northern Computing (NetAXS, WIN-PAK, etc.). It's crap and their support stinks. (No prizes for guessing how I know this.) > - swipe units must be environmentally hardy: very hot or very cold for > exterior units. Some units would be inside freezing or near freezing > cooling units. As Glen Johnson says, contactless/proximity cards are the way to go. A lot of systems are built around "dumb" cards operating at 125 kHz, and the Wiegand data format. The Wiegand format provides 24 bits, of which 8 bits are a fixed facility code. So it's basically a 16-bit card number. There's no authentication, and anyone can order the cards. It's largely a security-by-obscurity technology[1]. Depending on your needs, this may actually be perfectly adequate, as most conventional locks are scary easy to pick, too. But if you want something that will resist determined, equipped attack, look for contactless smart cards[2]. -- Ben [1] If the attacker can't borrow or read a legit card, it's somewhat safer, as it takes a while to go through even 65536 card numbers, and ordering that many cards would be cost prohibitive. But if attackers never did bad things we wouldn't need locks. [2] Much more expensive, though. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
