Spotlight: Vambrace’s approach to security

The keycard you use to enter your office or apartment building may soon be replaced by an app on your smartphone. The new technology, dubbed Vambrace and developed by a Redmond technology development firm called Posh Consulting, uses a smartphone to generate visual or radio codes that can be read by door sensors in existing security systems.

The smartphone app can generate either a QR (quick response) barcode that can be read by a scanner near the door or a radio signal that can be read by the security systems receiver. The radio signal replaces computer-generated door codes normally transmitted by electromagnetic fields from a keycard. Vambrace instead uses digital transmissions in the form of QR codes or a digital signal sent using near field communication, a radio communications standard now used by most smartphones.

The advantage of the Vambrace technology is that the door access code can be sent to a visitor by email with settings that offer access only during a certain period of time. Clients want the ability to automate the process of getting visitors into their building, says David Kelley, chief technology officer at Posh. They want to have some way of getting visitors to their conference rooms and into the building without having to issue visitor badges or having a receptionist.

This technology improves security by adding extra layers of encryption and changing the values stored within the codes every few seconds, making them nearly impossible to duplicate. Vambrace can be installed as a complete system, including both the phone app and matching door sensors. But it can also be adapted to use with the door sensors in security systems already in place in many buildings.

Its really a feature-rich, pluggable system that can do a lot of automation stuff as well, Kelley notes. Additional components such as surveillance cameras can be integrated into the system to build out a security network.

Posh Consulting (poshconsulting.net) plans to release Vambrace with available applications for iOS, Windows and Android operating systems later this summer.