In 2016, less than 5 percent of organizations used smartphones to enable access to offices and other premises. According to Gartner, by 2020 that number will increase to 20 percent in place of traditional physical access cards.

Apple filed for a patent covering the iPhone acting as an access key back in 2010. One of the patent figures is presented as our cover graphic above. Getting ahead of the curve, Apple demonstrated during a 2015 Apple event that hotels would be working with Apple on making both Apple Watch and the iPhone act as your digital hotel key. Apple also acquired Privaris in 2015 and one of their patents covered ID technology for opening an office door.

At present Starwood, W, Aloft and Element Hotels allow the iPhone to act a customer's room access key as noted in the promo video below.

With the iPhone being supported by Fortune 500 companies and Apple working with IBM's MobileFirst, we could be sure that Apple will be ready for this shift in the workplace.

David Anthony Mahdi, research director at Gartner stated for the report that "A significant fraction of organizations use legacy physical access technologies that are proprietary, closed systems and have limited ability to integrate with IT infrastructure. Today, the increasing availability of mobile and cloud technologies from many physical access control system (PACS*) vendors will have major impacts on how these systems can be implemented and managed."

PACS technology is widely deployed across multiple vertical industries and geographies to secure access to a wide range of facilities (buildings, individual offices, data centers, plant rooms, warehouses and so on), ensuring that only entitled people (employees, contractors, visitors, maintenance staff) get access to specific locations.

One of the easiest ways to use a smartphone's access credentials is to integrate them — via a data channel over the air or via Wi-Fi — into the access control system (ACS) and "unlock the door" remotely (just as an ACS administrator can). This approach requires no change to reader hardware.

Using smartphones can also simplify the integration of biometric technologies. "Rather than having to add biometric capture devices in or alongside readers, the phone itself can easily be used as a capture device for face or voice (or both), with comparison and matching done locally on the phone or centrally," said Mr. Mahdi. "This approach also mitigates the risks from an attacker who gains possession of a person's phone."

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