AHEC houses the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver and University of Colorado-Denver and has shared services, including institution-specific identity cards. The new contactless smart cards will initially be used for physical access and later for parking, meal payment, library checkout, event management and emergency incidents.
The cards are based on open standards technology, which allows them to be integrated with other student applications. AHEC wanted to have the option of using the encoded contactless smart cards along with existing magnetic stripe cards. Multicard developed the contactless cards and upgraded the campus’s printers to encode both smart cards and magnetic stripe cards.
“It’s being used for physical security,” said Steve Benitez, vice president of sales for Multicard. “From a security standpoint, you can protect that information that’s being written to the card over and beyond what just an encrypted card could do.”
Benitez said the data is protected through an encryption key. He said not only can the data be protected but it can be managed as well. He said there is a “combination lock” for every individual card. “If I’m [a hacker] smart enough to break the combination for one, I don’t break it for all, only for one. That is the protection and security you provide with smart technology.”
