INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL
A Global Solution
How OSDP is changing the access control market
- By Kaitlyn DeHaven
- Oct 01, 2019
OSDP, or Open Supervised Device Protocol, is
an access control communications standard designed
to improve interoperability among access
control and security products, and it’s becoming
the new standard for access control technology.
According to The Security Industry Association (SIA), the product
is more secure than the most common access control communications
protocol and supports high-end AES-128 encryption,
which is required in federal government applications. In addition,
OSDP meets federal access control standards such as Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) for Federal Identity Credential and Access
Management (FICAM).
Paul Ahern, president and CEO of Cypress Integration Solutions,
said that as this technology starts to become the standard,
Cypress is finding ways to step into the market, primarily by
reaching out to a global OSDP market.
Ahern has personally been working with OSDP for about
eight years. The technology is not brand new, but it has recently
started becoming more mainstream. When the market for key
card access control systems grew rapidly, manufacturers did not
have much time to focus on how to make the system as secure as
possible, Ahern said. In the process, some of the security a physical
key brought was lost, and now, OSDP is bringing that security
back to the market.
While the technology is easily accessible in the U.S., there is
a serious gap in the global OSDP market, according to Ahern.
“OSDP is a new standard in the industry that’s being adopted
as a more secure way of communicating in access control of security
systems,” Ahern said. “We’ve kind of taken a lead role in
developing products that will allow that technology to go forward
and allow end users, integrators and manufacturers to speed up
adoption of that new protocol, or that new standard.”
In the past few years, Ahern has been traveling to global trade
shows in an evangelizing mode to see if the market needed what
the company had to offer in terms of OSDP. Based on those efforts,
he said the company has been able to grow business significantly
overseas, bringing them into the global market just by
talking to individuals.
To continue these efforts and grow the success of the global market
push, Cypress decided to exhibit globally at the IFSEC International
Security Event & Conference in London this past summer.
It was the first time Cypress exhibited outside of the United States.
”We thought, if we’re going to be serious about this, we need
to let everybody know what’s going on,” Ahern said. “So, we decided
this year was going to be our first year to do an international
show.”
Many of the questions Ahern was asked at IFSEC were in regards
to OSDP. Companies in attendance were wondering where
Cypress saw the OSDP market going and how they could be more
successful in implementing this protocol.
“I’m hearing more and more questions about [OSDP],” Ahern
said. “People are starting to take it more seriously, and it’s something
that we’re passionate about getting out to the market.”
With so many questions surrounding the technology, Ahern
said it’s an excellent time to step into the market and address
the concerns on a global level. To do this, Cypress is developing
products to make it easier for organizations to adopt the standard
globally.
Ahern said one of the steps the company has taken to ensure
the products can be used internationally is to make sure the wireless
frequencies they use on their wireless products are allowed in
countries overseas. In addition, the company makes sure that it
sources the connectors they ship overseas.
This is one of the primary goals of Cypress’ current research
and development for future products. The company is continuously
studying the development of OSDP and the adoption of
the technology in hopes of discovering easy migrations paths
from older technologies to OSDP. This will allow for easy transitions
of technology for organizations and companies around the
world.
“We’ve been successful in the U.S. market for 36 years, we’ve
been somewhat successful in the European market for about eight
years, and we’re just seeing a great opportunity now,” Ahern said.
“We think it’s the right time to strike.”
This article originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of Security Today.