This is identity at the center. If it has anything to do with
IAM, this is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and
Jeff Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the
Center podcast. I'm Jeff and that's Jim.
Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
Oh, not so bad yourself. I'm doing great and we're here
recording a sponsor spotlight episode.
I'm ready to get my learn on. Yeah, we've got another sponsor.
Spotlights is great. People are really enjoying these
each other. These are that's pretty cool
when people embrace it like that.
These are special off cycle episodes that we put together
and we create these in collaboration with our sponsors.
That's what helps us get into like more deeply into like
questions around products, viewpoints, services, things
like that. You know more of a more of a
more of a deeper dive into those products than we would normally
do. I would say, Jim, is that
accurate? I think we, yeah, I think we've
been very adamant about keeping advertising and marketing out of
the podcast for years and it does create a limitation in
terms of some of the questions that they would otherwise ask.
So I think the sponsor spotlight is kind of taking some of those
constraints off and lets us, you know, learn.
And I think what's really cool about this episode is it's, you
know, it's not maybe our typical episode where it's like, you
know, core, everyday technologies that people might
understand. It's going to open people's eyes
to maybe another area. And that's why I think is great.
I mean, I'm. I love bringing that kind of
perspective to the podcast. Yeah, for sure.
I think this is an area that I'm excited.
This is something I have a little bit of experience in the
past with when it comes to like physical security and sort of
the blending of logical and physical access, things like
that. But it's always better when you
have smarter people than me talking about that.
So why don't we go ahead and get to our sponsor?
RF Ideas is today's sponsor and just to make it very clear,
right, this is a special, you know, one off, It's a fully
sponsored episode. That's what gives us access to
great experts that we're going to have here on the show today.
So let's go ahead and get started.
If you're not familiar with RF Ideas, I would encourage you to
go out and woke them up. But they're on a mission
basically to bring and bridge physical and logical security
together. And they have some pretty
innovative credential readers. And it really provides a pretty
what can be a a seamless authentication experience.
It's like, OK, you sound like a marketing person, It it looks
pretty cool. We're going to learn more about
it, and I want to welcome to the show Raul Cepeda.
He's the vice president of product management and
marketing. Welcome to the show, Raul.
Thank you. And we've also got Sarah King.
She's a pre sale engineer with RF ideas.
Welcome to the show, Sarah. Thanks, Jeff.
Thanks, Jim. So one of the things we like to
do before we get started is learn more about the backgrounds
of people in this identity space.
And I guess I'm going to ask you a question around this is rule
we'll start with you. Can you kind of start off with,
you know what is your background in the identity space?
Obviously you're in kind of the, I guess I I I equate, you know,
physical security with sort of badges and readers and things
like that. And I know we'll talk about it
in a little bit, but how do you, how did you get into the space
of identity? Yeah, so I I've been part of the
tech world for the better part of the last 1314 years, mostly
in automation in general, but specifically on the security
side, the 1st 12 plus years of my professional experience, I've
been working as a systems integrator.
So we worked, I worked for a systems integrator, we went out
did implementations with end user customers and about two a
little bit 2 plus years ago I joined RFID as to lead their
their product and marketing and now we're out on a mission to
develop innovative products out there for friend users and
partners like. So you can say to yourself an
identity person, a physical security person, an information
security person, or some some weird hydra of all three.
I think I'm a little bit of a Hydra.
I mean, I think if I look at the background that I spent the 1st
12 years, we implemented everything from bar coding
solutions to physical security to identity solutions.
Obviously the last couple years have been specifically tied to
identity. So learning much more about this
space in the last couple years. And so I guess now I consider
myself mostly on the identity side.
Well, welcome. The water's just fine.
It's very pleasant. People are very accommodating.
Sarah, from your journey, tell us a little bit about how you
got into the identity space as we're as we're welcoming you
into this. Yeah.
So my background for about the last 15 years has been anything
technology. I enjoy learning about new
technology, how to help customers and and better their
processes using technology. Started with RF Ideas almost a
decade ago. Started just in a support role,
tech support role. Ended up managing that tech
support department. Customer service, and now I'm on
the sales side. Yeah, I looked at your LinkedIn
profile Sarah, and I saw that you were there for over 8 years
and was like, wow, must be a pretty cool company to work for.
It's a it's a really great company to work for and a fun
company to work for and my my everyday changes.
That's awesome to hear. Raul, tell us about this awesome
company that Sarah just mentioned.
What do you guys do? What do you do over Darf ideas?
Yeah. So we've been around for about
30 years manufacturing credential readers.
And So what we're doing out there is, you know, what makes
us a little bit unique from other, you know, card credential
providers out there is that we're pretty agnostic when it
comes to the credentials that we support.
You know, so everything from proximity to contactless to
mobile credentials, we're working with a lot of the global
leading credential providers out in the marketplace.
So that stands out out there. Most smart card reader
manufacturers are typically focused on one or two
credentials. We support you know over 100
different credentials out there in the space.
So we've been doing it for, for 30 years.
You know, we're trusted across a lot of different verticals out
there and so we're the go to for things in particular like
healthcare. Just 30 years.
I'm, you know, it's it. You guys have been on this
passwordless journey for 30 years, right?
It's always been about possession based authentication.
Talk to us in that 30 years. Talk to us a little bit about
the journey and some of the milestones that you can tie back
to that 30 years. Yeah, I think you know if if we
look at kind of where we were, where we started, where we
really got our started, it's it's really in healthcare.
You know we we partnered with a company called Imprevada who
does a single sign on and we found an opportunity to help
clinicians and staff improve their day-to-day productivity.
The most common use case that you'll see out there is staff
and clinician are going from patient room to patient room
typing in a username and password, you know every time
they go to a new room. And so we identified an
opportunity to kind of help cut the time and and put more of the
focus on the patient by allowing clinicians to take their ID
badge and tap it on one of our credentials which enable them to
single sign on you know onto their workstation or or PC.
So you know it what we found is that it it started to cut a lot
of the time you know for for those those patients so that
they could be more focused on by the clinicians.
Yeah, I mean, cutting the time's important, but it darnwell
better work, right? I mean, you have a patient who's
maybe in like a critical position, right, that you go up
there, you do the the procs card, that person needs to get
into the system and they've got to be the right person.
So absolutely, you know, mission critical stuff, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean I I think secure
authentication is part of it, right.
Compliance is another factor that plays into it.
I mean if you look at the big market drivers for our
technology, you know it typically comes down to to three
things. It's it's all about security
mostly with data and endpoints, it comes down to compliance.
So in in the healthcare example there you have things like HIPAA
and then you have workforce productivity.
So it just happens that in that one use case you see all three
that that organizations are benefiting from.
So rule one more question. So this name RF ideas and it's
lowercase RF ALL CAPS ideas. I'm wondering how did that name
come about because it's pretty unique.
Yeah, it's, it's actually interesting, Jim.
So we actually went through a rebranding a couple of years ago
where if you looked at the spelling of our name, it was
actually RFID was all caps and then the rest of it, EEZ was
basically lowercase and that really stemmed from the
technology that we supported which was RFID technology.
So now Fast forward to a few years ago when we started saying
hey, you know we're we're not really we're we're kind of
pigeon pigeonholing ourselves into you know RFID.
But we're much more, we're evolving into much more support
credential support nowadays. And so we made a decision to
kind of change the name branding to go lowercase RF and ideas.
And part of that decision was that there's RF technology that
we're supporting nowadays that's much more than just your
traditional proximity cards or smart cards.
We've evolved into mobile credentials, we've evolved into
things like biometrics and so you know with it, it's kind of
the RF which is kind of the base of the technology into more
ideas that we're we're supporting.
I love the origin story of company names.
If I ain't fascinating, There's so many, so many interesting
ones there and I love the play on words a little bit that
you're doing the right kind of like RF ideas, like, OK, cool.
Kind of the same thing we do with right identity at the
Center for the podcast. You guys are in a very crowded
space and you know, there's lots of vendors that play in physical
security and have different form factors and so forth.
Let me ask you a hard question. Maybe it's not so hard.
I don't know. Why are you guys different?
What sets you apart from your competitors in this space?
Yeah, I think there's two things, right.
One of them I I kind of touched on a little bit earlier in that
our credential providers are agnostic when it comes to the
credentials that we support, right.
If you look at a lot of our competitors, they tend to kind
of focus in on one or two credentials that kind of
dominate a a particular region or a particular vertical.
We tend to be a little bit more horizontal than vertically
focused even though you look at some of the major markets that
we are being implemented in. You'll see things like
healthcare and and manufacturing.
But I think the agnostic aspect helps us get into more
environments out there. When you start to see
deployments where there's multiple credentials being
deployed, some for you know manufacturing settings, some for
the front office, it's IT. It kind of gives us a little bit
of a competitive advantage in those cases because they can
leverage the same base platform or the same reader for a variety
of different use cases. So you know, I'll give a great
example here where you know we we've been deployed in a couple
of Fortune 500 companies where they started using our
credential readers for time and attendance, where they affixed
our our readers to a time clock to automate and keep track of
who was you know clocking in and out.
And once they saw the advantages of our technology, they started
evolving the use of our credential readers to things
like single sign on and secure printing and and a variety of
other use cases. So it's it's kind of the one
benefit that if you have a multi credential support or there's a
need for a multi credential support in your environment, our
readers can can support them all.
I feel like there's a lot of different form factors and
standards when it comes to identity.
And I know that, you know, there's things like Fido out
there for credentials and authentication, you know, maybe
more historically on the logical access side, but now creeping
into the physical side as well. I guess one of the things that
concerns me sometimes in this space is like, OK, well, I
bought this product and now I only have things that work with
that product. Is there some sort of
interoperability or things like that that from a support
perspective where you know there are some common worldwide
credentials that you know the organization is supporting or
helping to contribute? To what's really cool is that
you could see our our readers amongst so many different
variety of of places. You know, you could could walk
in, you could see them on a production line on a on APLC.
You can also see them on on HM is helping secure you know those
typical use cases for a a shared workstation.
And again, as Raul mentioned, you know, supporting so many
different varieties of of badges, this could be used just
about anywhere. So, Raul, a couple of acronyms
got dropped there. HMI, I think it was PLC.
Can you kind of tell us what those are?
A human machine interface is, it's a user interface that
connects a person to a machine or system.
So quite often you're going to see these and in manufacturing
facilities, that's where really where you're going to see them
in manufacturing facilities. And so with frontline workers
there, it's it's a shared workstation where you'll want to
see, you know, users that want to authenticate onto these
systems. Because it's a shared
workstation, you're typically running, you know, 3 shifts
throughout the day. And rather than having a shared
PIN or a password, they're going to tap their reader or they're
going to tap their badge onto a credential reader to
authenticate. And I think the primary purpose
there is for accountability. You know if something were to go
off, you know they they know who was on that shift, they know who
was on that machine. They make sure that that person
is certified to to use that that those machine systems.
Yeah, and similar to APLC. So PLC is a programmable logic
controller similar to what Raoul said it it comes down to
accountability on those manufacturing lines, making sure
those who are supposed to be, you know, working those lines.
Are, are. Actually permitted to do so,
yes. All comes down to accountability
as well as making sure that you know you're not taking the time
to log in and out, you know of something that could bring the
lines down. So also productivity.
Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm picking up on the common thread.
So there's these shared workstations, especially in
healthcare, you have different patient rooms regardless of
who's logging in. It's not like they bring their
PCs from room to room, right? There's a a PC sitting there in
a lot of cases and they just they can tap in and out
manufacturing floor. You've got manufacturing
stations where people share the workstation maybe throughout the
day. What other industries are
because it seems to me like there's just so many industries
where you could run into the shared workstation scenario.
And you know, I'm wondering, are there others that you see
traction in or some of the most interesting use cases outside of
those two? Yeah.
So outside of those two, you know I'll give a couple of other
shared workstation examples. The first one is you know going
to your earlier question Jim about kind of the remote work,
you know you're you're starting to see these we work
environments, right, where it's shared offices and they have
shared workstations in an office environment.
So really enterprise organizations that that have a
hybrid environment, employees come in, they have their little
cubicle set up with their workstation.
That's a great example there where you got another shared
workstation environment, it might even be down to the shared
laptop, right. And so a user taps their badge
on their credential there and it's their user you know that
that pops up or populates on the workstation And then the other
common one you'll see is retail, right.
So retail associates at the point of sale, very commonplace
where you'll start to see some shared workstations where again
typically you'll see a lot of Max stripe readers or even
shared pins that they're that they're leveraging there.
And again, there it's about accountability.
You know, big retail stores want to make sure what associates
were on those POS lanes and making sure that there's no
theft occurring there at the same time.
Now that you see one, the scenario where you have one of
these shared workstation use cases and it's a large
percentage of the user population, but you also have
the corporate environment where then it's like, hey, let's
bridge it back and have this kind of level of productivity
for everyone. Because not only do you have
that great share, you shared PC use case, but there's also just
a convenience factor of not having to remember a password
and rotate a password. If I can use the same badge to,
you know, enter the door, get into my computer, you know, stop
and start my time card, you know, I think you referenced the
use case like that earlier, or a situation like that earlier, but
I bet that happens more than you suspect.
Absolutely. I mean work workforce
productivity is is absolutely important with a lot of
organizations. They want to make sure their
their employees are efficient. So I I completely agree with you
there, Jim. Yeah.
So you talked about imprevada and that that healthcare
scenario, I'd like to hear more about that.
I mean you know is it make you I would imagine is making a lot of
productivity impact on top of just the security.
And like what I was, you know what impacted me First off was
you know the ability to get in there quickly and and have it be
reliable. But I would think from a
productivity standpoint it's also like a huge impact.
But what do you what do you really see out of this
improvised use case? Yeah.
So they, you know, jointly, we conducted a study a while back
where improvised. I went out there to some of
their end users and started to understand like what is the real
return on investment that a healthcare organization's
getting out of this, this joint solution, right.
And So what they found was a lot of these nurses were typing in a
password up to 70 times a day, you know, so and and they
started do a little bit of a time study around it and they
found that each clinician, so a nurse as an example was saving
upwards of 45 minutes per shift just by not having to type in
their password or do a password reset.
So there was, there was time savings there of 45 minutes per
person but then when you factor in the actual password resets
that caused their IT team time and money that was an additional
$770 per password reset that they had to do as well.
So I think at the end it, it looked like with some of the
major hospitals they were saving upwards of $1,000,000 a year
just on on cutting out password resets.
Yeah, there's no doubt that they're saving money.
But I also think, like from a security standpoint, if you just
type your password 70 times a day, guess what you're doing,
you're picking the easiest password.
And then when it comes time to change your password, you're
just adding an extra exclamation point or a dollar sign or
whatever you do to kind of increment it.
But you know, bro, just to kind of key off of one thing that you
mentioned and I don't, you know, you just mentioned it once, but
you mentioned something about secure printers.
So can you expand on that use case a little bit?
So secure printing, the use case there is when you look at highly
regulated environments like finance, like healthcare where
information that is printed on a multi functional printer can be,
you know it's it's somebody's privacy, right, it's somebody's
confidential information, you have regulations like HIPAA.
And the Sarbanes-Oxley act where you can't be leaving
confidential information just laying around.
And so with secure printing, what that enables an
organization to do is, you know, a typical scenario is, you know,
I go to my workstation, I go to hit the print button and then
when I walk over to the multi functional printer, the paper's
already already there, right? So I just pick it up and I walk
away. But in these, in these
environments where it's highly regulated, this information just
can't be laying on the printer, right?
Somebody forgets about it, somebody else comes over, they
grab the paperwork and all of a sudden somebody's Social
Security number is is stolen, right?
Somebody's patient information is is taken.
And so the way it works with our technology is our readers are
embedded into these printers. And so I go to my workstation, I
print it. Nothing actually prints onto the
printer until I actually walk up to the printer.
I tap my badge on the reader that's embedded within the
printer and then it actually releases the job, the print job.
Yeah. I mean I've always said like as
IT professionals one of the things that we need to do is
make things more automated make people more efficient.
This sounds it's like it's right up that that alley where and
besides the environmental factor right instead of like getting
printed and someone just tossing in the trash can never gets
printed until actually the receiver is there to cap it and
get it. So I love all those factors kind
of getting the sense that you're talking about like there's just
OEM embedding use cases and I'm wondering how does, how do you
go about integrating your technology into other products?
Yeah. So we actually have a portfolio
Wave ID is really the the base of our portfolio and within
there we have several different form factors.
You know, there's desktop readers, we have these what we
call nano readers that are you know the the the world's
basically smallest credential reader on the market today.
But part part of that portfolio is also our OEM embedded modules
that we work with different, you know, print laptop, you know
medical device manufacturers out there where they want to have
secure authentication as part of their overall hardware.
And so we'll work with them to make sure that you know we
conduct A sizing study and embed our technology with them and
then along the ways get get the certification that's required
like FDA and everything else. So, So yeah, we work with a lot
of a lot of hardware manufacturers that want to
implement secure authentication as part of their end product.
Now imagine that you're probably working with lots of partners in
that space and I guess sort of that you know go to market
strategy of how do you, how do you get your product in the
hands of as many people as possible, right.
That's that's sort of the goal here.
So I guess is that, you know, that sounds like that's one of
the methods. Are there other methods of how,
you know, how do you get this thing to become like, Oh yeah,
This is why aren't we using this everywhere else?
Is it are you talking to customers, Are you talking to
like partners? Are you talking to, you know,
the Octas, the pings, the Microsofts of the world say,
hey, you know, we've got this fantastic product, how can we
work together? What are What are some of the
ideas that you've got there? No pun intended.
Yeah, Jeff, it's a great question.
I I think when you look at kind of you know we call it the
routes, the market, there's three different avenues that
that we kind of go to market. The the first one is kind of
your traditional systems integrators or or value added
resellers that you know they own the relationship with the
customer out there. They're kind of presenting
different solutions, understanding what the pain
points and then they come to us and say hey this is what my
customers pain points are, help us find a solution for that
customer. And so we you know we sell the
products through our distribution channel down to our
channel partners and then ultimately they're the ones
selling the product to the end user that's that's kind of the
first throughout the market. The second one is through Isvs
or independent software vendors. So we work with you know variety
of different application software providers.
So we mentioned a few like print management software.
You know, there's time and attendance software.
There's things like single sign on like like Improvata use case
that we talked about. And what we'll do is we'll work
with a lot of these Isvs, work on an integration between their
software and our hardware. And then ultimately they're
going to market with the full solution, the full software and
hardware solution. And then the third one is the
one that we just touched on a couple minutes ago, which is the
OEM route, right. So we work with some of the OEM
manufacturers again in the in the print space, laptops,
medical devices where they'll take our OEM modules embedded
into their hardware technology and then they sell it as a
full-fledged system or solution to to the customer.
So we are our primary go to market strategy is to go through
the channel. We don't really sell direct at
all. So we we tend to go through the
channel. You know what I, I see the
trending so much in the digital identity space is just this move
from password, you know, knowledge based authentication
to possession based authentication.
Sorry, I was actually wondering, you know, I saw a brochure that
you guys have around your digital wallet technology.
It's just like I was drawn to it.
It's like a a mobile app. Maybe you can tell us a little
bit about it. Yeah.
So it's been highly, highly requested years ago.
We, we started in the the Bluetooth space recently.
Now folks want to kind of go more of the the NFC route.
So kind of like an Apple wall integration.
So with the Apple Wall integration, you know you're
offering customers still a tap and go experience.
So you have your your credential on your phone embedded inside
your Apple Wallet, still a tap and go experience somewhere to a
way that you would present a card and also giving the
customer an even more secure credential.
Yeah, I think what's what's really cool about it is
obviously as an app there's no hardware cost, right you're
you're pushing it down to somebody's pre-existing, you
know that a device that they probably own themselves.
So it it kind of manages that hurdle, but at the same time you
potentially still have the option for the hardware based
solution. I'm just wondering like that
seems like an industry trend. What are some of the other
trends that you're seeing, Raul? Yeah.
So I mean just to add on a little bit more on the mobile
credentials, we look at you know 2023 for our organization, you
know, three of the four largest deployments that we had in 23
were all mobile credentials, right.
I I think we're starting to see a lot more organizations that
want a future proof their environment and kind of start to
stray a little bit away from ID, from physical ID batches, which
you know what we continue to support.
We see a lot of environments where they still want to have a
combination of physical batches for one part of their office and
mobile for another part of their for for their office.
So but we are starting to see a big shift away from physical to
mobile and in particular as Sarah mentioned kind of the
shift to NFC in particular or the OR the digital wallets.
And and we really simply launched a press release about a
month ago where we just became Apple certified for for the
Apple Wallet. But in terms of other you know
trends that we're seeing out there is for those organizations
that still want to stay with their physical badge this big
move to secure credentials, right.
So proximity is kind of, you know, was the first flavor of ID
badges that ever existed out there.
What we've come to find obviously now you know that
we've been in this space for a while is that proximity
credentials are not the most secure, right.
You know, somebody can take it, replicate it and and can you
know hack into your your facility, right, from a physical
access control perspective. But and the same thing for
logical right, somebody steals your badge but now with physical
what we're starting to see is you know is more a move to
secure credentials within their environment.
So they want some level of encryption.
And then to add another piece to it is you start to see this move
to multi factor authentication where you know they're assigning
either pass keys or a personal PIN or even biometrics to kind
of have that second and third layer of security for for their
employees. Yeah, you know, it's got me
thinking. So we got the shared workstation
scenario, let's say the hospital room.
Then you've also got folks who are, you know, maybe using
laptops, but they're more stationary, but still have this
use case that we're talking about from a hardware
perspective, I mean, do are we looking at the same thing?
Are the those proximity readers basically the same device
whether you're talking about like a corporate workstation or
something in the clinical setting?
Yeah, I mean we we have several different form factors of how
you know organizations want to deploy our readers.
We do have some that are mounted on walls, some of them that are
sitting on a desk. But at the end of the day the
beauty of our technology is we do have you know readers that
support all different technologies in one, right.
So as an example or Wave ID Mobile Mini is is one of the
products in our offering where you know in that same device, if
they want to support Apple Wallet credentials, if they want
to support BLE credentials, if they want to support physical
credentials, they can do that by standardizing on one product
within their whole environment. Yeah.
So it seems like you guys are are really like on this edge of
using the the mobile device. What about biometrics?
Because I think biometrics is kind of like the the trend
that's really picking up steam with the Face ID technology and
things like that. Where does that fit into?
You know, your stack of solutions?
Yeah, So we have a a product called the, the Wave ID bio.
The wave ID bio basically incorporates all these great RF
technologies that we've been discussing along with a
fingerprint scanner. So when we're talking in a world
of even multi factor authentication, you can scan
your ID badge and then also scan your your fingerprint for one
way to have a multi factor authentication.
Some of our partners also I mean they've they've embedded this
product into their product. So making it very, very easy,
especially let's say in a healthcare scenario to have
literally right at their fingertips a way of doing multi
factor authentication, biometric and RFI.
Think this is a really important concept.
So can these kind of traditional proximity cards and like a wave
ID bio live side by side you know all and because to me
that's always the challenge in IT is marrying legacy
technologies and I'm not calling the it's still much better than
the password right. But like now there's more
cutting edge stuff and having them live side by side.
I think that's the the real ticket.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a all in one product.
So still leveraging you know whether you have an HID Prox
badge or you know any any of the 100 badges that we that we
support you can you can still use those along with the the
biometric reader. Back in my day, I used to manage
physical security, which meant ID badges and readers and things
like that. And I think one of the things
that I was when I was reading up on your company, one of the
features out there is Reader Remote Management, which sounds
very interesting to me because that is not something that I had
before. So that meant I had to go out to
specific readers, make sure they were, you know, connected to the
networks, download card holder data, right?
All that stuff. For those who aren't familiar
with Reader remote management, tell us about what that is and
why that is so important for people who haven't experienced
that joy yet. Yeah, so one of the overwhelming
demands we've started to get from not only our partners but
end users is these readers are great, right?
They work seamlessly with the different credentials types that
are out there and what they have deployed in their environment.
But what they wanted to, you know, what they've Billy been
asking RF ideas for is a way to manage their devices in the
field. So anytime there's a requirement
for a firmware update, whether that's to, you know, fix bugs,
whether that's to update feature enhancements on our devices, you
know, historically it was a little bit of a pain to update
our readers with that firmware, right?
They had to go to every individual reader and tap a
configuration card or connect it to their PC and use some of our
software tools to be able to do that.
Well, this concept of, you know, device management has been, you
know, out there for a long time, especially in mobile devices.
And so we kind of replicated that same concept to say, hey,
we're going to build this tool that enables organizations that
can you know update all their fleet of readers on their
network all at once, right. And just like with mobile
devices, they, they do it probably after hours and IT team
will just push out an update and let all their readers get
updated overnight, right. To to be able to do that
seamlessly versus having to go one by one and waste IT
resources, time and money. So it's just a much, much more
efficient way for organizations to update their readers or
reconfigure their readers. You know, very often we're
seeing organizations that are shifting from 1 credential to
another. You know, that could be a
physical credential to a mobile credential.
And this is a way to reconfigure those devices to now say, hey,
we're now reading this new mobile credential and let's
update all the readers to be able to read that new updated
mobile credential. I would imagine that helps too,
with making sure that things stay current for threats and
attacks, right? There's always something that's
needs to be patched or updated. I guess from a security
perspective it helps with that as well, right?
Being able to deploy a patch or firmware updated, whatever it
may be right to stay on top of things.
Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean any any bugs we found any security you know risk that we
found it's the great thing is we have a great customer and
partner base out there that that brings us things to our
attention. And you know where we run as a
very nimble organization our engineering team is jumps right
on these these bugs and and whatever we we find a a patch
for it. We we redeploy the the new
firmware and then we get it out to our partners and customers
and you know more times than not we can fix these things in in
less than 24 hours. So we've been talking about
password less kind of throughout here as kind of a common thread.
It seems like it's weaving its way around, which is great.
I don't know anybody who likes passwords.
I was browsing the site and it came across this Converge ID
Password Plat Password less platform and it talks about
basically converting over to Fido 2 security credentials,
which is fantastic. And we certainly have, you know,
talked with Fido people in the past.
This is one of those first steps to removing passwords.
But can you talk a little bit about the Converge ID platform,
the password list platform and how that differs maybe from
something like Wave ID, which you've mentioned as well?
Because I know we're going to talk about that here in a second
too. I want to ask you about that.
Sure. So the Converge ID is our
solution for users to have a password list experience.
What's really cool about the solution and what sets us apart
from other Fido 2 software solutions is that we can take
the users current badge that they use to get into the door or
whatever they're using it for. So it can be a a standard prox
badge. Basically what the solution does
is it turns it into a a Fido badge, so no added cost to the
customer consumer and then offering that the extra layer of
security. That's pretty amazing, I think.
You take you so you take your existing badge.
You don't have to rebadge your population, which is a pain in
the butt. Yes, and expensive.
And expensive. Yeah.
And logistically a nightmare. And yeah, I've.
I've been through that. I don't wish that anybody.
Sometimes you have to do it for no, you know, for for reasons.
But so I can take my existing ID badge, convert it into a
password list credential, and then combine that with a wave ID
reader. Is that how that would work to
do? That that's exactly how it would
work. So it's basically taking you
know the option to to log in using the security key but
instead of actually having to have that that Fido key using
your your prox badges the Fido key and then in turn you can
turn that into multi factor by adding a pen on the other side
of that so. So tell me about the Wave ID
platform then how is that different from the Converge ID
password WAS platform? We've got Wave ID platform to
help me understand sort of the positioning of of Wave ID and
how that interacts. Yeah.
So, so Converge ID, if you look at it that way, converge ID is
the software side of our portfolio.
Wave ID is the name that we give to our hardware platform.
So you know we have several products out there like the Wave
ID plus mini. We have the Wave ID Mobile Mini,
the Wave ID Nano, the Wave IDSP Plus and the OEM embedded
products. These are all part of our Wave
ID hardware platform. So these are the actual physical
credential readers that get deployed out there in different
environments. So if you look at the two,
Converge ID is our software, Wave ID is our hardware
platform. Gotcha.
So the combination of the both is really is really the
differentiator saying we've got both the hardware and the
software side, we're able to do this conversion, we've got
password lists, everybody's happy and everybody you know
that that the solution kind of works together.
And then you've got the OEM side of things where you're
integrating directly with other hardware vendors, right, that
might be out there as well to integrate that same technology.
So now you've got this cross-platform compatibility
which sounds pretty sounds almost too good to be true.
I'll be honest with you Rob. There's got to be a catch here
somewhere. Yeah.
Well, I I think the catch there Jeff is that we still need
partners to deploy this stuff, right.
I mean we don't, we don't do it, all right.
We we're still very, very, very reliant on our channel partners
out there whether that's the application software through our
Isvs, whether that's through the systems integrators who provide
their service and implementation and deployment services.
So. So while it sounds too good to
be true there with with the hardware and the software that
that we're kind of bringing to market, you know I I do want to
kind of re emphasize that you know we don't go to RAC, we we
are very reliant and we value our channel partners out there.
My initial impression when I looked at the RFI DS website was
man, you could really make a business out of this.
I think what I've I've come to listening to more about the
solutions today is like, well I see a huge value add here, but I
also see this is like a great model for your partners.
Yeah, no, it it's a great, you know if we look at our our
channel model, it's it's very, very traditional to what you see
with with other hardware manufacturers that sell through
a channel, right. And so the beauty and and the
advantage or the benefit for our partners is that you know they
can wrap around their services. They're the ones that own the
relationship with the end user customers.
And so you know, we just partner together behind the scenes to
make sure that we're providing the best solution for our
partners. But at the end of the day, they
own the relationship with the customers they're.
They're making their, their profitability, they're putting
their margin mark up on it and they can still be very highly
profitable. You know a lot of our, our
partners feel like you know the margins they make with our
products are are you know superior to to others out there
in the marketplace. And so it's it's kind of a win
win for all of us. Yeah, I mean the software by
itself isn't going to do anything without the hardware.
So you need the hardware. What does it?
I mean if is there a typical implementation, what does the,
you know, what does an implementation of your product
look like? Is it really that you're rolling
out the software and the hardware just is alongside of
that? How or do folks say already have
like a software like an Improvata environment and then
they're upgrading to a better hardware solution being RFI DS?
Yeah. So it really depends on on who
the software partner is that you are working with a partner like
Impervata, they've already leveraged our software
developers kit, all of our AP is within their software.
So a lot of times our our hardware is plug and play in
those situations with with other software solutions, you know it
would depend on you know the size of the location, what the
focus is for that vertical, the architecture that you're
deploying the reader into. So there are some variables
involved, but we are lucky enough to have really, really
great partners that we work with that have a really great
understanding of our product as well.
Yeah, that's really cool. Now if somebody already has
badging system that they use, can they take those existing
badges and leverage your hardware or do they need to
reinvest in new badges? No, see the the the batches that
they have because RF ideas we we read you know at least 100
different card types at this point and all of the the
industry leading card types out there we can basically read all
card types on the market that are low or high frequency.
Yeah, that's that's the beauty of it.
I mean I think as we kind of you know, I think Jeff started the
podcast here today is that you know we're we're merging these
two you know markets together, right, the physical and the
logical together. And and the beauty of our
technology is that organizations you know can leverage the
existing badge or the existing mobile credential that they're
already using for physical access, for logical access.
Now that user might need to have a different software, right,
whether that's single sign on or time and attendance for those
logical access solutions. But but again, it's it's the
beauty of our technology that our readers can already leverage
the existing credentials and and implement it for for anything
beyond the door. I love the idea of this because
I think it's an area that is under explored and under
leveraged in a lot of identity programs today is a lot of folks
draw the line at Oh well we handle logical access well, why
not parts of the physical as well.
What if you could use some of those things that were already
carrying around to do MFA? You know, hear a lot of times
like OK, well you know, can't use a phone or can't use these
other sort of form factors, but they have an ID badge.
Guess what, Now you've got you know potential for MFA between
that and you know other components of the of the EMFA
factors. So I love the idea of this and I
love especially with the fact that I don't have to rebadge all
of my employees, which is awesome.
So thank you for that. I want to end the conversation
on a lighter note and you know, we've had kind of a neck deep
conversation. I feel like getting really kind
of deep into RF ideas again, no pun intended readers, NFCHMIA,
whole bunch of other stuff. I want to talk sports and
Olympics specifically. So we're going to wrap up
today's show by talking about if you could compete in any Olympic
sport, summer or winter, doesn't matter, just Olympics.
Which one would it be and why? Sarah, I'm going to start with
you because I know you're itching to answer this question.
I am. Oh, OK.
I'm a huge sports fan. I'm not typically a fan of
winter. It's funny because I live near
Chicago, but I think I would have to go with bobsledding.
I don't know if it's from the Cool Runnings movie or say, the
Jamaican bobsledding or I I think it's would just be the
biggest adrenaline rush and I'm all for that.
So I would have to go with bobsledding and I've never done
anything like that before. OK, so that was my next question
is like, OK, so this is not based on any experience other
than just watching a movie and seeing like, oh, that looks cool
now would it be like solo or would it be like a bobsled team?
No, I feel like I would have to be with a team so that people
could calm my nerves while it's all happening instead.
Of just yelling your your entire face out the whole way down.
Yeah, I'd probably be that person.
Pretty much. Raul, how about yourself?
If you could compete in any Olympic sport, which one would
it be and why? Yeah, so I mean, maybe I'll
start Jeff with a little interesting fact about me.
I was, I was actually pretty close when I was 17 to
participating in the Olympics. So I was invited to try out for
the Team USA Junior Olympics for hockey.
Unfortunately, I got cut on the last cut and so I wasn't able to
participate. So I wasn't quite quite up to
par to to make the team. But, but I think it's a no
brainer for me. I mean, I've been playing hockey
since at the age of 6. I I now still am very, very
involved in youth hockey here. My daughter Alexandra plays
hockey. And so for me, I I would have
loved to have had a chance to participate at A at a Winter
Olympic hockey game in my time. Another Miracle on Ice per
chance. Exactly.
Jim, if you could compete in the Olympics, which sport?
I guess the obvious answer for me would be baseball, because
Lake Rowell said that was my sport growing up, but I can tell
you definitely not good enough to represent this country in
baseball. But a sport that I've always
thought that I would be good at was curling because I know how
to use a broom. I think I can get on one knee
and slide on the ice and I think it's kind of sport, like the
practices would be fun, bring your own 6 pack and you would
just practice for a few hours. Yeah, or just or just drink and
have the six pack at. At least right be on like the
backup to the backup. What about you Jeff?
You. Know this is a tough one because
it's a few different sports. I kind of ripped to my Rolodex
in my head here. I don't know if Taekwondo is
officially a sport yet or not, but that was something I did
when I was younger. But I'm actually most excited
for the flag football coming to the Olympics in the near future.
I love the NFL, That's my jam. And I think having played that
very long time ago, a much faster, slimmer, younger Jeff
was pretty decent at at football.
So I would be on the flag football team, sort of a
Christian McCaffrey type, kind of a scat back slot receiver and
also the kicker. Because.
This is what I did. So that you might pick
basketball, even though you're not really the hype for
basketball that was your. No, but I was good at basketball
too, when I was younger. So I was, I was, I was actually
probably much better at basketball when I was at
football. When I think about it, that was
probably a better pick. But I just like football, so
I'll stick with that final answer.
This has been a great conversation.
I really appreciate you guys taking the time to kind of
demystify this a little bit. This is an area that we really
haven't talked too much about in the past on this podcast, is
that blending in the physical and the logical worlds.
I think there should be more of this and I really hope people
take a look at some of the solutions you guys have out
there. You know, go out, visit the
website rfideas.com. We'll have some links in our
show notes for people to check out things.
But I love this idea of taking things that we're that people
are already familiar about. You do not have to train people
how to use an ID badge they already know.
So why not leverage a solution like that for multi factor
authentication or or heck even go into password lists.
Write things like that and chances are you property already
have a mix of the technologies you might already need.
But I would certainly encourage people go out, check out the
website connect with Raul or Sarah on LinkedIn.
We'll have their LinkedIn profiles and our show notes
roll. I want to turn over to you for
kind of final thoughts. For people who listen to this
episode, what's the one thing that they should take away from
this conversation? Yeah, I I think the one take
away here is and and Jeff kind of already touched on it is if
you're, if you're an organization that is looking to
kind of leverage the physical access credentials for logical
access. So you want to secure your
endpoints, you want to secure your networks, you want to
secure your data. You know we're the solution for
that, right? If you have a need for better
productivity, for better security, for regulatory
compliance, we're the good fit for that.
So you know, come visit us, you know, talk to Sarah and I and
and we're happy to help provide a consultation.
There, Yeah, so visit the website rfideas.com again, links
that we in our shows for people to check out.
We're on the web idacpodcast.com at Twitter IDAC podcast.
If you got questions that you wish you that we had asked, send
them our way and we'll if you don't reach out to Raul and
Sarah directly, we're happy to do it and maybe follow up in a
in the future episode. So with that, we'll go ahead and
leave it there for this episode. Appreciate everyone for
listening and we'll talk with everyone in the next one.
You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
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the Center.