the interview Marc Handels, co-founder of Salto “Mobile access and cloud access have crossed the line from buzzwords to reality” Mobile access, cloud based solutions and more doors with access control are the main trends in the access control market according to Salto Systems co-founder Marc Handels. “In the next ten years I think electronic locks will penetrate virtually every type of building”, he says. By Henrik Söderlund Founded in an apartment in the northern part of Spain in 2000, Salto Systems has now grown organically to become a 115 million Euro company with 29 offices around the world. Today only 5 per cent of the business is domestic. Marc Handels, co-founder and Vice President Marketing and Sales, stresses that the company´s biggest markets are very much linked to the sizes of the markets. “Before that was not a key driver, but now when electronic locks are all over the place, you see that the size of the market is basically driving how important it is for us”, he says. What is the biggest trend in the access control market? “I think mobile access and cloud access are two tendencies, which have crossed the line from buzzwords to reality, and they are here to stay. Professional end users like retail often do not have the capacity to dedicate IT resources to keep access control updated in local shops, and to keep the servers and the networks secure. Management of the access rights is perhaps not down on the local level but probably somewhere else, and here cloud really makes sense. And of course, to put access control on all doors, not only the exterior doors.” What about access control as a service? “We have actually just launched a product called Salto KS Keys as a Service. We see a great potential here – at the moment mostly for small and medium sized enterprises. It will take longer until the cloud becomes standard for larger projects, like governmental projects, large university projects and large hospitals. Those are end users that have the capacity to make sure their systems are secure and well protected, and updated, all the time. They do not have an absolute need to have access control in the cloud and therefore, we need to provide other network solutions.” What is your view on biometrics like fingerprints and eye scanners? “In Asia this is bigger, partially because there are less privacy concerns there than in other markets. This is a technology that will not go away. We have to be able to provide such a solution and integrate these products into our systems, but for the moment we are not making them ourselves. We focus on electronic locks.” What is your view on smart buildings and access control? “We believe very much in it and we are working on solutions there. We think that the door – or an access point, which probably is a better word – actually is at the centre in smart buildings, smart cities, smart home – smart everything. We believe in giving access to buildings in a clever way to keep them as open as possible, so users going into these buildings have the feeling they can move wherever they want to, but still in a controlled way.” And the Internet of Things? “It is intimately connected to smart buildings. IOT is happening as we speak, but obviously there is Mobile access, cloud based solutions and more doors with access control are the main trends in the access control market according to Salto Systems co-founder Marc Handels. a big challenge and that is security. We believe that the success of IOT comes from a trust that consumers and end users have that manufacturers are really taking care of them. Most end users can not know if the products are safe, they can not test them themselves. Here, the manufacturers have an enormous responsibility to keep their IOT systems and cloud systems secure.” control or a mechanical solution.” How secure are cloud solutions? “There are not many companies selling these products today. We have taken many precautions and only keep necessary elements in the cloud. We call that distributed security. Even in the extremely unlikely case of a hack of our cloud, nobody would be able to open let us say Our systems are well designed, well protected and well encrypted. How do you handle security? “We take this very seriously and sometimes we are more cautious than our sales team would like us to be, as it leads to longer development times. IOT is a fantastic opportunity, especially for the locking world, to drive business and to interact with customers.” What is the risk for an access control system getting hacked? “Our systems are well designed, well protected and well encrypted. However at the end of the day, access control security also depends on how secure your own network is, something that we do not have control over. However, the most common way to break in is still through a physical door or a window, no matter if it has access 1,000 doors, because the authorisation of opening the door is partly locally activated. The more popular cloud access becomes, the more questions will be asked about security, which is good and why it is important to be one step ahead.” What is your biggest challenge for the future? “In the next ten years I think electronic locks will penetrate virtually every type of building. It does not matter whether it is a commercial building, a residential building or a healthcare building, everyone will look at electronic locks. The growth of the market is almost guaranteed. The challenge for us is to make people think of Salto first, and to take an important share of the growth of the market.“ Security News Every Day – www. securityworldhotel.com 26 • d ete ktor internati onal