Are you participating in GITEX Global 2022? If yes, which products and solutions will you be showcasing at the event?
Yes, we look forward to connecting with partners, customers, and end-users in the security industry once again. We will be showcasing the latest solutions in Secure Issuance (SI), including an affordable high-speed ID and card printer, Identity Authentication Management Solutions (IAMS) for zero-trust environments, as well as biometric identity and verification solutions.

What are your expectations from the event this year?
Earlier this year, HID Global outlined seven trends that are shaping the security industry, including sustainability, data analytics and artificial intelligence, contactless biometrics, and zero-trust security. We expect to have conversations with our partners and end-users regarding these trends, helping them identify the future-proof solutions that address them.

For example, our ID and card printers are not only fast and reliable, but feature Drop-on-Demand (DOD) inks, helping eliminate wasted ribbon panels. Another example is our biometric solutions, which enable secure authentication while complying with complex data privacy regulations. Finally, we are also eager to hear from our customers and help them solve their most pressing challenges in security.

What will be your theme of participation at GITEX?
HID Global has been powering and protecting the physical and digital identities of the world’s people, places, and things for more than 30 years, and despite our stability and experience, we’re always striving to be at the forefront of the industry. Technologies and new demands are always emerging, so we want to showcase how this focus on innovation is translated via our integrated solutions—from secure issuance of documents to seamless authentication and management of these documents to contactless biometric enrolment and
verification.

How have your regional strategies changed in recent months?
HID continues to focus on having a strong presence across the globe, and thanks to our Global Partner Program, we’ve successfully accomplished that. Our elite Global Partner Program equips our partners to solve customers’ secure identity challenges and drive mutual growth.

Our Channel Marketing Teams are closely aligned with our Channel partners to support them with marketing and sales enablement materials, training, and resources. We’ve also recently expanded our HID sales teams across Africa to better support customers who are embracing digital transformation in the continent.

Any other info you would like to add?
Don’t forget to visit HID at Booth H5-A15 and we hope you enjoy the conference!

Tell us about yourself and your current job role.
I was born and grew up in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and have earned my degree in Statistics from Middle East Technical University. At that time analytics and statistical models had been used in finance mostly however after a summer trainee program at a renowned financial institute, I decided to progress in the technology sector where I could be close to innovation and rapid change and could work in an environment where I would have customer-facing contact.

Technology was exciting even 30 years back, I  worked with computers that were the size of a fridge and discs that were the size of a physical music album (LP), have seen the worldwide web take off, and learned statistical programming. I moved to Dublin, Ireland in 1997 and worked for Oracle in their EMEA Direct Marketing Division until I decided to pursue an MBA. I earned my master’s degree in international management in Germany in 2000.

From 2000 to 2010, I had the opportunity to apply my analytics, technology, and management skills at Siemens Headquarters in Munich. There I worked at various customer-facing roles in business development across information and communication and medical segments with a focus on identity and access management. Identity and privacy had been two pillars that kept me intrigued over the years especially with the dawn of cloud, connectivity, and IoT.

HID and I crossed our paths during HID’s pursuit to connect physical access control with logical access and provide the best of both worlds to their channel. I felt I could make a difference and combine my acumen of the IT and identity business with the physical dimension. That is why I decided to join HID in 2010.

At HID I held various positions, starting with Segment Management. After that, I moved towards business development for mobile access. At the time when I stepped into that role many years back, mobile access was a new concept in the security industry. Back then we have built the foundation for what the offering has evolved into today. The role was exciting, I was part of the core team that incubated and led HID, the industry market leader, into a new offering as well as a new business model. From there on I was promoted into roles to set up end-user and consultant business practices, inside sales team, and build sales excellence across the global business.

Today I lead the strategic business development team for the largest business area of HID, namely Physical Access Control Solutions (PACS).  In my current role, I am responsible for leading the vertical engagement, consultant specification, strategic alliances, marketing, and sales excellence teams for PACS globally. Looking back, the red thread in my career so far has been a lot around transformation and change management next to the technical, sales, and business development parts I get a lot of energy out of change management. Empowering teams, departments, and business units to embark on a journey to discover new territories and challenging the status quo is something I enjoy very much.

Tell us about your journey into the security industry. Was the security industry your first choice?
HID being a leader in the identity space with credential authentication, authorization and administration capabilities were and are clearly innovating and genuinely investing to make physical security a strategic stakeholder in IT transformations. Everything I did in the IAM (Identity and Access Management) space was connected to security, compliance, and governance with a focus on software and services. HID added the hardware dimension to the multifaceted security approach.

From my perspective, the security industry makes a difference in people’s lives. What we do as an industry helps to mitigate risks, we strive to enable our customers to create trusted environments so that they and the people who use them can fulfill their potential and have ease of mind when it comes to being secure to move freely.

Have a look at what we do for K-12, for universities, hospitals, airports, age care facilities, multi-tenant buildings; we are genuinely in the business of protecting people, things, and places. We have a responsibility, we have a brand promise, “ it just works” we deliver reliable, durable, and easy-to-use products and services with the highest security standards in the market and best in class customer support. Technology, innovation, and the element of protecting what matters pulled me into this industry; that is why I am still here. Having seen the impact of what we do, my respect for the security industry and for those who serve keep growing to date.

During your tenure in the security industry have you experienced major changes the industry has gone through?
I did and these are very remarkable moves. The first one I can call out is the move from hardware to software and services. HID-led mobile access has been a strategic shift in the security mindset of end-users as well as security installers/integrators from an added-value perspective. The possibility of giving and revoking access rights in real-time, using different form factors other than a badge, opens many opportunities in a connected ecosystem.

The second one is digitisation. Industry 4.0 and digitization are not only about automation and robotics. Digital engagement/marketing, social engineering, user journey-focused agile development, and innovation are also prominently finding their foundation in the physical access control world. How we communicate and what we communicate to our end-users have fundamentally changed; with the possibility of using Omni-channels to access information and any offer, we are much more cognizant of the desires of the user and user experience.

Then third the commoditization of IT and us expecting to receive every service at our workplace with the same ease and speed and simplicity as we have in the private world; that means if I am able to buy, subscribe, delete, activate, terminate, update service with a click in the private world, why cannot I do that at work? That is why we have invested/continue to invest heavily in the cloud to give this ability to our customers.

Finally the return to workplace challenges: Will we work all the time from an office or not? How will this impact us and our channel and end-users in the coming years? How can we adapt to change? The voice of customer efforts we lead across functions evaluates all angles that will ease adapting to changing requirements.

Are there any challenges you face on a day-to-day basis working in this industry?
Working in a global business and having a team in many corners of the world from California to Sydney, the current travel restrictions and regional lockdown policies as well as resulting remote work situations are challenges. I guess we are all taking our toll in connecting with our customers, with our teams, and our people. While we do our utmost, homo sapiens is (I am) a social creature, we need live interaction, we want to debate face to face, we want to mingle. We have new members of the team who never had the chance to meet the larger team face to face. We all look forward to seeing each other again.

What sort of future do you foresee for the security industry as a whole?
Security is there to stay but will go beyond security as well playing a vital role in bigger ecosystems. In my view, the industry will transform and merge with IT in the years to come. We will see a time where we will move in spaces and those spaces will recognize us. There will be mechanisms that will adjust all ecosystem controls towards the individual automatically and in crowds, with machine learning and patterns the systems will advise best options or even pick for you. So technology in combination with new ways of identification and authentication will most likely change the known access control user experience we see today fundamentally.

Data analytics will derive conclusions and the assets-related predictive analytics will evolve to more sophisticated security predictions/forecasts. Identity will play the most crucial role and whoever holds the identity of whoever is favored as the most reliable identity holder will scale. This will not be limited to governments, private enterprises will be part of this. The security experts will walk to a site and let augmented reality tools guide them for best practices. Digital competent installers/integrators will provide less error-prone services.

End users will have a full view of their assets and maintenance maps. Due to all these technology shifts, we are seeing the dynamic of new entrants offering adjacent and complementary functionality to traditionally single-purpose physical security offerings. All these changes will lead to a new dynamic as to who provides value where and the role of players in our renewed industry.

What more needs to be done to welcome more and more women into the security industry?
While I look for new team members, the most important attribute I seek and encourage is curiosity. The second is an attitude; the right “can do” attitude. We should encourage enterprises in security to seek curiosity and attitude. Education and technical knowledge may be gained over time but others not. That is why I encourage recruiting women who have these traits, and where possible directly from universities and coach and grow them. I know for a fact that for us that had been a rewarding experience and we will continue to do so.

I do not think we make a good job of marketing the value of the security industry in our job advertisements. We should speak to the desires of women who seek diversity, who seek to make a change, who look to take part in projects that have a meaningful impact. Security has many aspects which can intrigue women that seek a career in innovation, technology, analytics, risk management. The security industry is that place because it holds all these elements. Our eye for detail, multi-tasking nature, and conflict management skills are of great value when it is a matter of creating trusted environments.

Also, I call on employers to consider the positive impact of diversity at the leadership table. Diversity can come from many areas including gender diversity, women and men have different gifts. I strongly believe that companies need to diversify to remain competitive. Bringing in people with different backgrounds and perspectives can lead to better decision-making, greater innovation, and higher engagement in the workplace; different views stimulate creative problem-solving.

Albert Einstein says the best: We must not only learn to tolerate our differences. We must welcome them as the richness and diversity which can lead to true intelligence.

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HID Global addresses these challenges with solutions ranging from physical access control to multi-factor authentication to cloud-based printing and financial instant issuance, making it possible for people to transact safely, work productively, and travel freely. “As the world continues to adapt to current conditions while also looking to the future, we understand that no person, device, or workplace can go unprotected. HID Global is supporting our end-users and partners in choosing the right Identity and Access Management and Secure Issuance solutions to ensure a safe return to work for all employees and stakeholders,” said Bilal Saleem, Channel Partner Sales Manager, HID Global. “This year, we look forward to reconnecting with thought leaders and influencers in the industry while highlighting our solutions that secure access to physical and digital resources, as well as streamlining card issuance and personalization.”

When it comes to organizations, security is no longer limited to physical security. As businesses continue to digitize and enterprise resources continue to grow in terms of quantity and complexity, protecting every digital asset also grows in complexity. Key highlights for HID Global’s solutions at GITEX include:

• Advanced multi-factor authentication (MFA) – ensures that only necessary users gain access to critical networks, applications, and data—with the highest level of convenience possible.
• Secure physical and logical access management – supports Zero Trust security initiatives at all levels, including who is accessing what areas within your workspace.
• Identity management and credentialing – ensures that users and devices are securely issued high assurance factors and that their identity lifecycle is managed properly.
• Insights, analytics, and reporting tie complex data together through AI-powered intelligence, allowing for rapid decision-making as well as meeting compliance requirements on time.

HID Global will also offer visitors a demonstration of its comprehensive secure issuance solutions, including cloud-based printing solution, HID FARGO Connect, and Financial instant issuance solution HID TRISM, and a wide range of card issuance solutions to fit the various needs of businesses across sectors. “Our main objective at the show is to reconnect with our partners and end-users and engage with as well as highlight relevant security and identity management technologies. We are also excited to receive feedback from users of our solutions and learn more about new technologies and industry trends,” added Christophe Malgorn, Director of Regional Sales, Secure Issuance, HID Global.

Employers today face a new challenge: to provide a safe and clean work environment as employees bring with them a new social consciousness centered on public health awareness, social distancing, and hygienic spaces. As employees consider a return to the physical workplace, they must adapt to new requirements, implement new procedures, and leverage technology to alleviate their employees’ concerns.

Access control plays a critical role in creating a safe back-to-work strategy. Organizations can leverage contactless physical access technologies — including mobile credentials along with Bluetooth solutions — as well as implement location services and visitor management tools to provide employees with an experience that supports a healthy and safe work environment.

CHANGED EXPECTATIONS
As organizations move toward reopening their offices, workers bring with them a new awareness of issues around human proximity, environmental and surface cleanliness, and the sharing of publicly accessed resources such as touch screens and keypads. Hygiene isn’t a new concern, but the level of awareness is new, as well as the need to give employees the confidence that their workplace is not only secure but healthy and safe.
Physical access is a prime area of interest.

Crowded entryways, elevators and shared working spaces are a threat to safe social distancing. Credentialing processes that come with high human-to-human contact are also a cause for concern. Those who manage physical access can play a key role in helping to meet these changed expectations.

With health and safety concerns at the forefront, security and facilities personnel have the opportunity to be the heroes of the day. At a time when employee safety is not just an ordinary need, but an extraordinary moral obligation, teams can rise to the fore with proactive solutions that meaningfully impact the quality of life.

Access control management can help route employees, in tandem with efforts to stagger work times. Physical access control systems (PACS) can also leverage location services to support contact tracing and reduce crowding, and these same systems can be used in support of thoughtful visitor management.

While contactless credentials inherently support a touchless “badging in” experience, employers and building managers should implement these technologies as part of a holistic approach to building management. Clear policies, explicit signage, cleanliness protocols — all are part of this big picture.

Those looking to support a safe return to the workplace can look to technology to help minimize the high-touch human interactions that have characterized PACS in the past. By upgrading from legacy systems to more modernized solutions, it is possible to significantly reduce human contact around access control in a way that directly addresses employee concerns.

TOUCHLESS ACCESS CONTROL
Various forms of touchless access control can help to reduce viral spread at human-to-object touchpoints. By reducing contact between humans and the objects related to access control, security could help to minimize potential cross-contamination. Automatic door operators, revolving doors, and sliding doors — all can help to reduce contact at high-volume entry and exit points. These can be coupled with contactless credentials and readers to ensure security while minimizing surface contamination.

Another strategy involves the use of long-range capable readers that leverage Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connections to deliver read performance at a distance. With a read range of up to several meters, BLE can further distance employees who might otherwise crowd up around readers and doors. Mobile access likewise reduces the need for employees to physically touch cards and communal readers.

Organizations that rely on keypads or two-factor authentication may find mobile credentials and mobile capable readers to be a more hygienic alternative. The user is required to unlock their phone using a passcode, fingerprint, or facial read in order for the phone to unlock, thus delivering two-factor security without the need to touch a shared keypad.

In the same way, mobile also allows for a biometric layer to be added to the access experience. Businesses can configure the mobile credential to only work when the device is unlocked, thereby requiring the owner to authenticate using their enrolled biometric, whether fingerprint or facial recognition. That mitigates the risk of a lost, stolen, or shared mobile device from being used.

And by leveraging the technology on the mobile device instead of at the door, users are only touching their own device and not a touchpoint that is shared with every other occupant. Touchless credentials, including mobile-based, shouldn’t be limited to opening doors. Organizations also may find that these credentials support more hygienic protocols for logging in to networks, paying for vending, or activating printing. In order to reduce contact at shared surfaces, these technologies need to be implemented in tandem with clear policies and supporting signage.

OVER-THE-AIR CREDENTIALING
Most credentialing processes rely on a high degree of human-to-human interaction: someone in IT or the card office prepares the card, the card may then be passed to HR or the front desk for delivery to the user. And when a card is lost or stolen, the process repeats. Whether it is an employee or a visitor, the credentialing process is typically a high-touch operation.

Over-the-air provisioning minimizes contact for those seeking credentials, and it can have a dramatic impact on the human-to-human contact for the administrator charged with assigning credentials. Fewer visits from those looking to obtain credentials significantly reduce the risk factor for those that normally see a range of personnel on a daily basis.

VISITOR MANAGEMENT
Visitors introduce a new variable to the equation. They must be credentialed upon entry, and their untracked movements can pose a health risk, or at least introduce a dangerous unknown should contact tracing become necessary. Solid policies and advanced technologies can ensure the safe movement of visitors. Visitor management solutions can be used either standalone or in conjunction with an organization’s access control system. Visitors self-register in the lobby and hosts are notified when they arrive.

Driver’s license scanners, barcode scanners, cameras, and printers all help support those front desk processes.
While the primary use case is for visitors, these systems can also be used to issue employees temporary badges for single-day use or to issue replacement badges.

Visitor management solutions are also ideal for a range of high-volume settings, including healthcare, schools, and logistics — all places where physical access control is critical and visitors are frequent. Even more, records from the visitor management system can be used for follow-up tracking of potential contacts in case an employee or visitor receives a positive virus test result.

LOCATION SERVICES
The key to keeping people physically distanced is knowing where they are at any given time. Much how GPS is used in outdoor settings, location services leverage BLE beacons to ping off gateways that in turn can identify the location of individuals in a physical space. An individual’s identity can be based on an ID card which broadcasts continually, creating a virtual map of location relative to the fixed gateways.

Location services give management a means to be proactive rather than reactive in their efforts to promote physical distancing. The same system could make space utilization more efficient. Connected beacons could broadcast room occupancy, for example, letting people know which spaces are free and which are in use. In the same way, this connectivity could serve as an early-warning system.

There’s also significant forensic value in this capability. Should an individual test positive for COVID, the arduous task of contact tracing — identifying people who have an infectious disease and those they’ve come in contact with — is automated. “Rather than relying on a person’s memory, you can trace a person — or anything tagged with a beacon – and build historical data on where that person had been and who else had been there, with graphics and analysis,” said Blokker.

In addition, location services support “mustering” — the ability to call together a select group of employees in an urgent circumstance. Location services can also support monitoring usage of hand sanitizing stations. By embedding a BLE sensor in the soap or sanitizer dispenser, the user’s beacon authenticates and registers the event. With hand hygiene being a key way to prevent the spread of infection, enforcing consistent usage is vital to a healthy workplace.

MAKING THE MOST OF PACS TECHNOLOGIES
For those charged with implementing and overseeing physical access control, these are extraordinarily challenging times. While technology can play a significant role in supporting social distancing and other pandemic-related needs, policies are at the core of any successful return-to-work effort.

It is critical, for example, to have solid audit systems in place. PACS systems generate logs, reports, and archives — invaluable information if put to good use. Building managers can leverage this key data to see who was in the facility and when in order to build a fuller picture of the operational risks.