A little over 1 year ago, the Association created the ALAS Award for Security in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through this award, we sought to recognize the best security projects in the region, taking into account aspects such as social impact, educational value and technological innovation, among others.
Let's dwell for a moment on social impact. This great absence of many technological innovation projects that has found in security a prosperous terrain and needed by technologies at the service of people.
The social impact understood not only as an indicator, that which is used by rulers and the political class to show results at the end of a period, but as the empowerment of a society thanks to these technological developments.
Much has been said about the impact of information technologies on social development but when talking about security technology and specifically electronic security little or nothing could be said about it.
The ALAS Awards have made it possible to recognize true technological innovation in the security industry at the service of the people.
And an example of this are the winners of our 2014 edition, awarded last week in Mexico City.
The Government of the Federal District received the first prize for its Safe City project, which has positively impacted the safety of the city and shows positive results for citizens.
As Miguel Angel Mancera, head of government of Mexico City, said at the award ceremony: "Security is what allows governance."
Without technological leverage, few things would be possible to manage in modern cities with their big security and management problems.
"I am convinced of the use of technology that comes to simplify and not eliminate the human task," he added.
In the same vein, but from the point of view of private enterprise, we highlight in a special way the award obtained by Nuovo Security, partner ALAS, who received the award for the second best security project in the region for its CCTV Solution for Community Security with the Government of the Atlantic, in the north of Colombia.
"The success of this project is that it has been inclusive, from the very decision of where they would install the cameras," says Efraín González, founding partner of Nuovo Security.
"We managed to raise public awareness and show people that security is not just the responsibility of the police," he added.
That technology is not only at the service of people but that it allows them to manage their own safety and that of their community is something that this project has achieved creatively and breaking down obstacles as great as fear.
NFC Myths and Truths
By William Barrera
Instructor ALAS
You've probably heard the term NFC but do you really know what it means and its applications? We see in detail what this technology entails.
NFC (Near field communication) is a wireless, short-range, high-frequency communication technology that allows the exchange of data between devices.
The standards and protocols of the NFC format are based on RFID standards described in ISO/IEC 14443, FeliCa, and the ISO/IEC 18092 parts base.
These standards deal with the use of RFID in proximity cards and those defined by the NFC Forum, founded in 2004 by Nokia, Philips and Sony, today has more than 150 members.
NFC communicates by induction in a magnetic field, where two spire antennas are placed within their respective nearby fields.
It works in the 13.56 MHz band, this means that no restrictions apply and does not require any license for its use. There are two ways of working:
Active: Both devices generate their own electromagnetic field, which they will use to transmit their data.
Passive: only one device generates the electromagnetic field and the other takes advantage of the modulation of the load to be able to transfer the data. The initiator of the communication is in charge of generating the electromagnetic field.
Once the communication between the NFC devices is established and depending on the application used, the necessary information is transmitted, such as a code for the case of an access control, a balance information for the case of payment, or an information from the NFC device for the case of an electronic transaction.
Therefore, we can say that NFC is part of RFID technology, which represents only one of the standards of radio frequency identification. Below are the differences between the two technologies:
RFID is the process by which elements are identified solely by radio waves and NFC is a specialized subset within the RFID technology family.
In other words, NFC is a high frequency (HF) branch of RFID and both operate at the 13.56 MHz frequency.
NFC is designed to be a secure form of data exchange, and an NFC device is capable of being both an NFC reader and an NFC tag. This unique feature allows NFC devices to communicate peer-to-peer.
NFC tags and devices are short-range (up to 4 inches / 10 cm).
RFID tags can be scanned from a greater distance of up to 300 feet (100 meters).
You can scan multiple RFID tags at once, but only one NFC tag at a time.
RFID tags are widely used for industrial and commercial purposes, such as checking inventory in a warehouse, logistics chains, asset tracking, among many others.
NFC devices are general purpose on a simpler or consumer-oriented level. This happens mainly because RFID equipment, in general, costs more than NFC equipment.
An NFC device is capable of acting both as a reader and as a tag. This unique capability has made NFC a popular choice for contactless payment and in some cases acts as an access control card; this is a key factor in the decision for mobile phone manufacturers to include NFC in new smartphones.
In addition, NFC smartphones pass along information from one smartphone to the other by touching the two devices together, making exchanging data such as contact information or photographs a simple task. Today the big manufacturers already offer their phones with this technology it is necessary to check if they have it and where it can be used.
NFC devices can read passive NFC tags, and some NFC devices are capable of reading passive HF RFID tags that comply with ISO 15693. Data about these tags can contain commands for the device such as opening a specific mobile app.
You can start seeing HF RFID tags and NFC tags more often on ads, posters, and signals, as it is an effective method of conveying information to consumers.
According to what I mentioned in the not too distant future you will only need to have your smartphone with NFC format, this will allow you to buy from transport tickets, have access to your company and even make payments anywhere; this is what happened with the multi-technology cards (contactless, proximity and magnetic stripe) widely used today around the world.
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