Whether you are looking into producing ID cards, photo ID, ID badges or other security or identification credentials, it is of the highest importance to answer the two following questions:
- What are your security requirements?
- How you plan to enhance them?
Your company security policy may give you some direction in choosing what security options to look for. It is always a good initiative to steer to upper management for current and upcoming organizational security requirements. Get these requirements together in a comparison chart, and start your ID card software analysis.
Design Features
Most serious solutions provide basic image editing tools within the designer interface. Unless you are familiar with advanced and expensive solutions like Adobe and Corel, and don't mind taking the time to take a class or two to get familiar with them, it is recommended to focus on integrated solutions. This means being able to insert and edit images and objects within the card software solution.
Look for dynamic tools or objects, making you much more efficient in adding data labels like the card holder's name, company, function, unit and other useful information. Conditional objects provide you with the ability to display event triggered objects. A good example of how this may come handy, assuming the event's hosts choose to serve alcoholic beverages, which is unsuited for minors, if IDs are planned accordingly an attention grabbing graphic object like "21+" will help waiters distinguish under-aged attendance from the crowd.
Security Enhancement
There are two areas where one should investigate for security; the security integrated in the ID card software and the security features embedded onto ID cards and badges produced with the solution.
If you are producing identification cards or ID badges for 1000 people, this means you are managing, storing and are responsible for the confidentiality of these 1000 database entries. To enforce this obligation, you need at the minimum password protection on the software, or better advanced security options and ideally user privileges management. User privileges management provides you with tight control over user actions from the design process to badge creation, badge edition, badge deletion, printing, data export, access to activity logs, and so on. This is exceptionally useful in accreditation procedures, it avoids unwanted security mistakes, plus it secures your computer station for fraud attempts.
Security enhancement on ID cards and ID badges often refers to biometrics and card encoding. Biometrics is a digital representation of a unique physical feature of a person that may be used to recognize a person. ID photos, signatures and fingerprints are excellent examples of biometrics. Encoding features such as barcodes, magnetic stripes, and SmartChips provide additional security information and may also store other types of information about the carrier. The ID card software is the gateway to these security features and their properties. Bare in mind that you will also need the appropriate card printer and other peripherals to capture some of these security features. Not all card printers print in color, double-sided, or allow card encoding. To capture signatures you will need a signature pad.
Color coding is a great and quick way to enhance on-site security by attributing colors to specific business units or access rights control. For example, a red rectangle going across identification cards or ID badges could refer to people from the finance unit of a company or volunteers for the event.
Production Options
ID cards and identification badges come in many categories and styles. One thing to decide up front is whether you wish to print single or double-sided cards, as some solutions don't allow this option. Whether you wish to print on plastic (PVC) cards, paper badges, or labels, the medium supported is another important quality to take into account.
To save a few bucks, look for the forced K panel option. Forcing the K-panel tells your printer to print selected objects on the ID card only using the black panel from the ribbon. It avoids wasting expensive color ribbons to produce grayscale or black colored objects.
Serious ID card software solutions empower you with photo editing features for crisp and clear ID photos. This feature grants you with the ability to adjust brightness, contrast and color levels. You may also import a picture from a file or a camera and crop the photo to the right size and position without using third party solution.
ID Card Software Connectivity and Integration
Microsoft Access and/or ODBC database connectivity is where your organization can significantly gain on speed and efficiency. Some solutions available on the market will, with a little extra work, connect to your enterprise solution, therefore, integrating the ID card software within your business processes.
ID card software solutions empower you to produce a variety of exciting and useful identification cards ranging from membership cards, employee ID, student ID, access control cards, convention badges, event badges, loyalty cards and many other possibilities.
For more information about ID card software or card software solutions, visit www.idpack.info. The wealth of information made available about ID card and
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About the author (IDpack.info)
Dominique Baptista has been in the identity and security industry for more than 10 years.
IDpack ID card software is a SOHO-iT innovation. SOHO-iT is a company focuses on developing powerful software tools to support organizations in enhancing their security requirements with access control cards, membership cards, convention badges, student ID cards, employee ID, event passes, library cards, and other identification needs.
