At its Enterprise User Interoperability Showcase on Sep. 23, the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance (PSIA) announced its new Physical-Logical Access Interoperability Working Group. This group will develop a specification to unify logical and physical identities so that security industry manufacturers, integrators and end users can develop cost-effective, easily administered solutions that span the physical and logical security domains. 

“Many security end users want to synchronize the identities used by their logical and physical security access control systems but cannot justify the costs of proprietary solutions that require custom programming and disruptive new work flows,” said Mohammad Soleimani, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Kastle Systems, and interim chair of the new PSIA group.

“The new PSIA specification will provide a standard way for enterprises to ensure the logical and physical access privileges associated with an employee’s role are always in synch. That synchronicity then makes it much easier and cost effective to create solutions such as confirming an employee is physically present before permitting access to an application or database as well as solutions for easily managing physical and logical access privileges when employees travel,” he said.

The PSIA Physical-Logical Access Interoperability Working Group will have its first working session during the ASIS show at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 24, at McCormick Place, North Building, Level 1, Room N138. Companies interested in joining the group are welcome to attend or if unable to, contact David Bunzel at the PSIA at dbunzel@sccg.com.