Biometric technology company, Zwipe, has partnered with London’s Rose Bruford College to overhaul the campus’ physical security needs by introducing a combination of biometric and contactless access control.

Specifically, the contract will see the company’s Zwipe Access solution used in Rose Bruford’s International Drama School of Theatre & Performance. The deployment of the biometric access solution was installed by Kodit Security, a Zwipe distribution partner and security systems integrator based in the United Kingdom.

The solution itself, Zwipe Access, is a fingerprint activated contactless credential that works with both 125kHz and 13.56MHz contactless infrastructures that may already be in place on a campus. In this way, the fingerprint enabled credentials don’t necessarily require an upgrade or replacement of existing door access readers or the backend system.

”The reason we chose Zwipe Access for our educational institution is that it is such a cost effective migration to biometric access control which fits in perfectly with our existing system hardware and software platform,” says David White, facilities manager at Rose Bruford.

On the user side, the card only allows communication with a door reader after first being activated by the user’s fingerprint scan on the card itself. Each card is encoded with the unique fingerprint of its distinct owner storing the biometric data locally on the card, which the company says removes the need to manage and secure a database of fingerprint information.

Kodit Security has a strong relationship with Rose Bruford College dating back over 15 years, and the implementation of Zwipe represented a win-win for both parties. “The issue we had come across with other biometric solutions was the high cost involved with upgrading readers and software, if not the entire system,” says Jack Reyner, managing director at Kodit Security. “When we realized how simple and cost effective it would be with the Zwipe biometric access card, we grasped the opportunity.”

The size of the Zwipe Access credential is nearly identical to that of the standard CR80 card size in both length and width, only it’s thicker (.31″) to house the removable battery and 3D capacitive fingerprint array. The cards also feature red and green LED lights to indicate successful and unsuccessful reads. The cards are compatible with HID Prox and iCLASS, Mifare Classic, DESFire EV1 and other contactless flavors upon request.

“We see the education sector as an ideal use case for Zwipe Access, as it allows institutions to integrate biometric access control in a quick and cost effective manner with existing infrastructure, either for the entire premises or for secure areas such as labs and data centers,” says John Laws, Zwipe’s director of sales EMEA. “We have seen great interest throughout Europe, and are currently making progress to secure deployments with several other universities.”