Proximity Card Security

Proximity Card Security

In the Time & Attendance Industry. Proximity card security can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, there are the security issues from misuse by employees and secondly, from misuse by people outside the organisation.

Your employees and card security

Again, from a time and attendance perspective, the security of employee proximity card is about whether the employee can pass that card to another employee to @clock@ for them when they arrive late or depart early. This is called Time Theft, and it can account for higher labour costs to a business. 

Time theft was an issue with older Bundy Clocks which used punch cards kept in a wall rack. It was very easy to punch in for other employees, and this was generally done based on an arrangement between coworkers.

Proximity cards and key ring tags which are retained by employees make this considerably harder. This is particularly the case when you consider that the main reason why employees are late is because of unplanned events such as traffic, waking up late, or vehicle problems. If your work make has his proximity tag on his keyring, then it is not possible to clock in for them.

While it is certainly possible to circumvent the system and clock for a workmate, there are other ways to improve security when using proximity-based time and attendance systems. The most practical of these are proximity time clocks that are equipped with CMOS cameras that take a picture of the employee on every clocking event. Images of the employee are stored with each clocking event.

In practice, admin staff simply do random checks of these photos but what makes the impact is simply advising employees that a picture is being taken. Once they know they are being watched, they will be very unlikely to clock in for their coworkers.

Card Security Issues

The most secure type of proximity cards is Mifare products. Other products are quite simple by comparison to hack, and for further reading on this, there is an excellent article at this link. This article is quite technical in nature and is only really relevant to access control applications where building security and access is involved.

From a pure time and attendance perspective, non-employees would not be interested, for example, in duplicating cards so that they could clock into the attendance system.

Conclusion

Proximity cards and keyring tags, particularly with the addition of a camera, offer a level of security against employee time theft that approaches biometric systems and is much easier for an employee to use.

Unless the proximity cards used by the time clock system are shared with an access control system, then there are minimal security concerns.

The Time & Attendance Consultant