Organisations using Access It! security systems can now integrate facial recognition and multi-factor authentication without overhauling their existing infrastructure. This enhancement, facilitated by ASSA's Control iD integration, allows users to maintain their investment in Mercury controllers and familiar workflows, ensuring continued efficiency and security.
The integration does not require new panels, rewiring, or a steep learning curve for personnel. Operators can seamlessly adopt enhanced security measures through the Control iD face reader, which captures credentials and verifies identity using facial recognition. This information is relayed to the Mercury controller via Wiegand or OSDP, maintaining Access It! as the main system for managing access rules and logging events.
Enhanced security with biometric authentication
Facial recognition enhances security by verifying the individual, addressing vulnerabilities associated with shared cards and guessed PINs. The setup supports multiple authentication modes, including face-only access for speed, face plus card or PIN for increased security, and QR codes for temporary access. Access It! processes these authentications identically to traditional card reads, requiring no additional training for operators.
Data encryption ensures secure transmission in this 24/7 operational model
Despite the sophisticated biometric capabilities, the integration maintains all traditional functions within Access It!, ensuring no interruption in access decision-making, scheduling, and event logging. Control iD Vision AI adds liveness detection to differentiate between real faces and fraudulent presentations, while provisioning and deprovisioning occur within the existing system infrastructure. Data encryption ensures secure transmission in this 24/7 operational model.
Adaptable to various environments
This biometric solution suits high-traffic areas where identity assurance is critical, such as corporate offices, data centres, healthcare facilities, and educational institutions. The integration supports MP, LP, and EP series Mercury-based panels and utilises Control iD iDFace biometric readers. Compatibility requires Access It! version 12.4 or higher, with no limit on the number of supported Control iD readers.
By incorporating biometric authentication, Access It! users can enhance security without replacing established systems, offering a cost-effective solution that respects both budget constraints and operational continuity.
If users are running Access It! today, they have already made a real investment — in Mercury panels, in wiring, in workflows the operators know cold. The question isn't whether biometric authentication is worth adding. It's whether adding it means starting over.
The ASSA Control iD integration brings facial recognition and multi-factor authentication into Access It! through the Mercury controllers that users are already running. No new panels. No rewiring. No new system for the team to learn.
Multi-factor authentication
Cards get shared. PINs get guessed. Badges get left in cars. Facial recognition closes that gap — it verifies the person, not just the credential they're carrying. For access points where speed and certainty both matter, that's a meaningful upgrade over card-only authentication.
The objection most security teams raise next is predictable: does this mean replacing what they have? It doesn't. That's the design principle behind this integration, not a footnote to it.
Card-only authentication
The architecture is deliberately simple, and that's the point.
- A Control iD face reader performs the facial recognition and captures the presented credential.
- The credential number is sent to the Mercury controller, over Wiegand or OSDP, whichever users are already using.
- Access It! remains the system of record. It applies access rules, schedules, and anti-passback, and logs every event exactly as it would for a card swipe.
- The net result: biometric authentication at the edge, with no system redesign. The Mercury controllers, wiring, and Access It! workflows — unchanged. The reader does new work; nothing else has to.
Four authentication modes
Four ways to authenticate, one system managing all of them. Different doors carry different risk. The integration supports four authentication modes, and users choose which applies where:
- Face only: the fastest path through the door, built for speed at access points where a quick, frictionless walk-through is the priority.
- Face + Card adds a second factor for higher-security doors. Works with physical cards and mobile credentials over NFC or BLE.
- Face + PIN: a third option for areas where users want elevated assurance without issuing a new credential type.
- QR Code: built for temporary or visitor access, where supported by the reader.
Every mode reports back through Access It! the same way a card read would. The operators don't learn a second system, they keep using the one they already know. What changes for the security team and what doesn't. This is where the integration earns its place, not in the feature list but in what it leaves alone.
What changes:
- Facial recognition processing happens at the reader itself, so the time between presentation and decision stays fast.
- Identity verification is backed by Control iD Vision AI with liveness detection, built to tell a real face from a photo or a video.
- A double-tap on the reader can trigger configured actions, mirroring the double-card behaviour the team already uses.
Provisioning and deprovisioning follow Access It! automatically: assign someone a Control iD-mapped access level and they're in; remove that access, or remove them from the host system, and they're out. Records stay synchronized automatically, with face photo sync available as an optional, separately controlled setting.
What doesn't change:
- Access decisions, schedules, and event logging all stay in Access It!.
- Administration stays in the Access It! desktop client — no separate database, no second login.
- The operators' monitoring workflow is exactly what it was yesterday.
Application data and biometric data are encrypted in transit, and the system is designed for always-on, 24/7 operation, which matters because access control doesn't get a maintenance window.
Identity certainty matters
Facial recognition earns its place fastest in environments where identity certainty matters and foot traffic is constant: corporate offices, data centers, healthcare facilities, and education campuses. Anywhere a card alone isn't quite enough and anywhere “replace the whole system” was never going to be the answer the budget or the operations team wanted to hear.
What users need to get started
- Access It! version: 12.4 or higher
- Controllers: Existing Mercury-based panels: MP, LP, and EP series are supported. No controller, panel, or wiring changes required.
- Readers: Control iD iDFace biometric readers. Validated models are the IDFACE MAX and IDFACE PRO.
- Communication: Wiegand or OSDP between reader and controller. OSDP (version 2.2) is required if users want door-status indication at the reader.
- Capacity: No limit on the number of Control iD readers a system can support.
- Licensing: Control iD is licensed per reader.
