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Star India is one of India’s most well known brands, and creates more than 20,000 hours of content annually for over 50 channels in its network. The firm has thousands of employees, spread over seven locations in India. Star India, which has always been proactive in ensuring the highest security standards, was keen to replace the physical access cards, due to its inherent limitations.
Firstly, physical cards were prone to damage, and there was a high possibility of them being misplaced, and even misused. Further, every new replacement of a physical card had to be done manually, which
cost the company, time and money. Sumir Yadav, Star India’s Senior Vice President (Administration and Facilities), started looking at options, and decided that the best option was to leverage the use of mobile-based access solutions, as almost every employee had a smartphone. After looking at different options, Star India zeroed in on HID Global’s mobile access solution that eliminates the need for access cards and reduces costs related to card re-issuance. Employees just need to tap their mobile phones running Android or iOS to unlock their doors and gates.
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Says Sumir Yadav, “The new solution from HID Global lets us take advantage of technology in this mobile first age and achieve better security without being intrusive or compromising on user experience.” The company has deployed HID Mobile Access for more than 3500 employees across seven locations. The deployment, from the initial planning to the solution going online, took Star India only 12 weeks.
Mobile IDs, a core component of HID Mobile Access, are provisioned via the solution’s online portal. “A virtual card in a mobile phone gives Star India unprecedented flexibility to provision or revoke IDs 
quickly. Using the portal, Star India can now easily and efficiently assign access rights to employees over the air. Onboarding of employees can now be done in a faster way,” states Vishwanath Kulkarni, Director of Sales, Physical Access Control, India and SAARC, HID Global. Whenever a new employee joins the company, the IT administrators can effortlessly enroll them into the system by simply sending the employee an email invitation. The system-generated email contains directions and an activation code for the recipient to download and use the HID Mobile Access App.
Upon entering the code and successfully activating the app, the employee can begin using their mobile device to unlock doors and gates at Star India. Since mobile IDs are provisioned via the online portal, they can be easily changed, issued or revoked by any of Star India’s own administrators at a moment’s notice. HID Global’s technology ensures that end-user identity data stored on mobile IDs is protected using secure data encryption.
Phone-based access
Doors can be configured to allow only people who have the right authorization. Additionally, the management team also receives better data on staff’s time and attendance. As employees can use their own devices to sign in, Star India does not have to maintain an extensive inventory of physical access cards, and is spared from the hassle of managing and maintaining physical access cards.
In the future, Star India is exploring options to expand the use of mobile access beyond opening doors and gates to include accessing its staff canteen and collaboration spaces, as well as to manage visitor access.
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