The most successful credential transitions begin not with technology selection, but with strategic planning. Organizations that approach migration as purely a technical hardware upgrade often encounter unexpected difficulties. Those that treat it as a strategic security initiative with clear goals and stakeholder alignment consistently achieve better outcomes.
Before evaluating credential technologies or vendors, establish clear answers to these fundamental questions:
What are we protecting? Different facilities, areas, and assets require different security levels. A loading dock, executive suite, and data center likely need different credential security profiles. Understanding your security zones helps prioritize where to deploy stronger credentials first.
What does success look like? Is the goal to eliminate all proximity cards, or to secure the highest-risk areas first? Are you targeting compliance requirements, reducing security incidents, or both? Clear success criteria guide decisions throughout the migration.
What's our realistic timeframe? Credential migrations typically span months or years, depending on organization size. Understanding your timeline influences whether you pursue a comprehensive system replacement or a phased approach that maintains existing infrastructure.
Who are the stakeholders? Successful migrations require buy-in from security, IT, facilities, HR, and often procurement and finance. Identifying stakeholders early prevents roadblocks later.
Effective migration planning requires understanding what you're migrating from. Many organizations lack comprehensive documentation of their access control infrastructure, making assessment the crucial first step.
Document as much as possible about your current credential population:
This audit often reveals surprising findings—forgotten credential populations, undocumented access permissions, or credentials that should have been deactivated years ago. These discoveries strengthen the case for migration while identifying cleanup work that should be done before or during the transition.
Map your physical access control infrastructure:
Understanding your infrastructure reveals migration constraints and opportunities. Readers that support multiple credential technologies enable phased transitions. Controllers limited to specific credential types may require replacement.
Not all access points present equal risk. Prioritize areas for credential upgrade based on:
This risk-based approach allows organizations to achieve significant security improvements early in the migration, even if complete system replacement isn't immediately feasible.
Organizations successfully migrate from proximity cards using several distinct strategies. The right approach depends on your infrastructure, budget, timeline, and risk tolerance.
Deploy new credentials and readers location by location—facility by facility, floor by floor, or building by building.
Advantages:
Considerations:
Best for: Organizations with multiple discrete facilities, those with limited budgets requiring multi-year migrations, or situations where user populations are relatively location-specific.
Deploy new credentials to high-risk areas first, regardless of location, then progressively address lower-risk areas.
Advantages:
Considerations:
Best for: Organizations with clear security zones, those facing compliance requirements or audit findings, or situations where demonstrating security improvements quickly is important.
Deploy new credentials to specific user groups—executives first, then managers, then general staff, or by department.
Advantages:
Considerations:
Best for: Organizations where user populations naturally align with security risk profiles, or situations where pilot programs with specific groups are preferred.
Deploy readers that support both legacy proximity cards and modern credentials, allowing gradual credential replacement without reader changes. Many LEAF Community devices fit this requirement.
Advantages:
Considerations:
Best for: Organizations with limited budgets, those wanting maximum transition flexibility, or situations where complete infrastructure replacement isn't feasible.
Critical security note: When using multi-technology readers as a transition strategy, organizations must disable the legacy proximity capability after transition is complete. Leaving both capabilities enabled creates a vulnerability that allows attackers to clone the proximity component of dual-technology credentials, thereby defeating the security improvement entirely.
With a strategy established, organizations must select the credential technology that replaces proximity cards. The options vary in security, functionality, and cost.
The most common proximity card replacement, 13.56 MHz smart cards provide two-way communication between card and reader, enabling mutual authentication and encrypted data transfer.
Security levels vary significantly within this category:
Advantages:
Considerations:
Smartphone-based credentials delivered via Bluetooth, NFC, or hybrid approaches.
Advantages:
Considerations:
LEAF Community members like rf IDEAS offer convenient tip sheets that can help users learn how mobile credentials can both boost security and also reduce costs.
Combining credential technologies (card + PIN, card + biometric, mobile + biometric) provides layered security that significantly increases the difficulty for attackers.
Advantages:
Considerations:
Once strategy and technology are selected, successful implementation follows a structured approach:
Before full deployment, run a contained pilot that tests your selected approach:
Well-executed pilots save time and money by identifying issues before full deployment. They also build organizational confidence and provide proof points for stakeholder communications.
Based on pilot learnings, begin phased deployment following your selected strategy:
Migration isn't complete until legacy credentials and capabilities are fully removed:
Organizations sometimes maintain proximity cards "just in case" even after migration. This defeats the security purpose entirely—the system is only as secure as its weakest credential.
Even well-planned migrations encounter predictable challenges:
Solution: Phased approaches aligned with budget cycles, focusing on high-risk areas first to maximize security ROI. Multi-technology readers can bridge to longer-term complete replacement.
Solution: Clear communication about why migration is necessary, emphasis on improved user experience features (faster readers, mobile convenience), and visible executive support for the initiative.
Solution: Comprehensive infrastructure audit to understand all systems, phased approach that tackles most critical systems first, consideration of open architecture platforms that can manage diverse infrastructure.
Solution: Prioritize solutions supporting universal standards, maintain multi-vendor capability where possible, and ensure contract terms allow future migration without penalty.
Solution: Maintain redundancy during transition (users carry both credentials, readers support multiple types), schedule deployments during low-impact periods, and establish clear rollback procedures.
Throughout the migration process, organizations should consider the role of universal standards in long-term credential strategy. Proprietary credential formats create the same vendor lock-in problems that may have contributed to delayed proximity card migration in the first place.
Universal standards like the LEAF Framework enable organizations to:
Credential migration represents an opportunity to not just improve security, but to establish an interoperable infrastructure that remains flexible as requirements change.
The ultimate goal isn't just migrating from proximity cards—it's establishing a sustainable approach to physical security that can adapt to evolving threats and technologies.
This means:
Organizations that view credential migration as a one-time project often find themselves facing similar challenges years later. Those who treat it as establishing sustainable security practices build resilience against future threats, and evolve to leveraging their access control system as one of their greatest assets.
Transitioning from proximity cards to secure credentials represents a significant undertaking, but is achievable with proper planning, stakeholder alignment, and phased implementation. The detailed framework outlined above provides a structured approach that has proven successful across diverse organizations and environments.
The next article in this series, "Universal Standards as the Path Forward," explores how organizations can ensure their credential migration creates long-term flexibility rather than new lock-in scenarios. We'll examine how universal standards, such as LEAF, enable security improvements while staying vendor agnostic and interoperable.
About the LEAF Community
The LEAF Community creates universal standards for access control systems to achieve interoperability across the industry. We bring together leading companies and organizations to overcome vendor lock-in barriers and promote standardized frameworks that allow different access control technologies to work together seamlessly. Learn more at leaf-community.com.
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