Access control solutions will continue their evolution in 2025 as organisations assess and adapt to dynamic and increasingly dangerous threats. Trends to watch include the growing adoption of mobile access credentials and digital IDs, and the integration of digital and physical security and other technologies.
Other ongoing trends include the integration of AI into access control solutions and the increasing adoption of contactless biometrics for enhanced convenience.
New access control innovations
As these trends gather momentum, they highlight the pivotal role access control systems play in combining security and convenience, every hour of every day. Organisations must strike the ideal balance between a secure environment and satisfying user experience if they are to meet increasingly vocal demands for both.
Achieving this balance not only delivers the expected user experience but also delivers multi-layered threat protection while introducing exciting new access control innovations.
Digital technologies and open standards
Modern access control solutions deliver a faster pace of innovation and dramatically improved capabilities
Modern access control solutions deliver a faster pace of innovation and dramatically improved capabilities as compared to what was possible in the past. The primary objective is no longer simply to secure places and assets so they are beyond the reach of the wrong people. Now it also must be as easy as possible for authorised individuals to enter a building or access digital assets.
Mobile access credentials and digital IDs are increasingly a preferred solution for achieving this seamless and convenient access experience. Technology convergence is happening at a rapid pace and this convergence makes it possible to integrate digital and physical security with real-time location systems and other technologies. Together, these converged technologies provide multi-layered protection against both cyber and physical threats while also enabling valuable new capabilities.
2024 State of Physical Access Control Report
As AI is increasingly incorporated into access-control solutions, we will see even more powerful ways to leverage access control data for analytics use cases. Almost 40% of respondents to our 2024 State of Physical Access Control Report said they were looking to do this.
Equally consequential is the rise of fast, frictionless and easy contactless biometrics solutions in a wide range of applications including healthcare, where 32% of respondents to our recent 2024 State of Healthcare Security Report said their facilities have already implemented this technology for authentication. Looking at the broader marketplace, nearly one in four (23%) respondents to our 2024 State of Physical Access Control Report cited biometrics when asked to “name the top three trends shaping the wider access control industry in the near future.”
Evolution of access control solutions
As access control solutions become increasingly central to secure and convenient daily life, these and other trends will have an ongoing impact on all market sectors from healthcare and banking to the corporate real estate enterprise and business and college campuses. At the same time, those responsible for a facility’s digital and physical assets know that these trends – and security in general – will never be a static proposition.
The only constant is change. Threats will never stop evolving, and those tasked with protecting organisations against these threats must never stand still. The evolution of access control solutions that we saw during 2024 will continue through 2025 and beyond, and organisations will need to remain thorough and vigilant as they address today’s ever-expanding attack surfaces and ever-evolving attack schemes.
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