Once introduces, they quickly replaced their predecessors, the MIFARE and Wiedands RFID ID cards. What happened to them?
The MIFARE
The MIFARE operates at 13.56 MHz on a smart card that can be programmed by an apropriate printer. The range - distance the reader can read its information, is fairly short and is generally used in public transactions such as transportation payments, i.e. toll payments. This technology is used extensively in transportation in Europs and Asia as well as the US. Eventually, the success lead to its use in HID access for buildings and offices.
However, in December 2007, Henry Plotz, a German Researcher and Karsten Nohl demonstrated before the Chaos Computer Club, a club of computer hackers, during the 24th Chaos Communications Congress, how they were able to hack the MIFARE chip showing its security vulnerabilities. That precipitated the decine and today, it is rarely used.
The Wiegand
The Wiegand is the trade name of the technology after its inventor, John R. Wiegand, used in card readers and sensors embedded in cards for access control. It has three small wires embedded in the Wiegand card in which the credentials are encoded during the manufacture of the individual cards.
It uses an industry standard 26-bit format with the possibility of being able to issue a total of 16,711,425 ID cards with unique numbers.
The problem with the Wigand cards is that they need positive contact to transfer data. This results ina bottleneck where the throughput is retarded as compared to proximity sensors. Because of the low rate of throughput, it has been severly impeded as a contender in its use as an HID access card.
The HID proximity cards
The HID proximity card is the most popular RFID card in the market today. The acronym HID stands for Hughes Identification which was spun off from the time of Howard Hughes, owner of Hughes Aircraft Company. Each card is the size of today's ATM card. It contains an RFID chip operating at 125 kHz or 13.26 MHz. The proximity cards are known more to use the 125kHz technology while the 13.26 MHz is the iClass cards.
Within the card, the information that is embedded is seperated into two. The first is the facility code and the second i the card's number. These two bits of information provide the unique identifier of the card bearer. Every card that is authorized for one particular facility will have the facility number. The card number is unique to the card holder so that the two codes combined will identify who is authorized to be present where.
When the card passes within the read-range of the proximity card reader, the data are read and transmitted to the access control, and when verified, authorization is given and the door opens to allow entry of the person.
This simple procedure makes the use of HID acess very safe.
Conclusion
On the balance of all the information it is safe to say that between all the technology available, the simple way and secre structure of the HID acess system is the best bet so far.
An HID access card is very different in operational details in comparison to an hid proximity card. Ask your professional consultant on which is uniquely right for you.
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