What is Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP)?

What triggered the security specialists to introduce OSDP?

Continuous advancements in physical access control technology seek evolvement against threats, vulnerabilities, and updates in the security protocols. One of the striking changes that occurred, in this case, can be referred to as Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP). OSDP is the new card reader connection standard that has dethroned the legacy protocol known as Wiegand technology. All the significant industry manufacturers are endorsing it since its inception in 2011 by the Security Industry Association (SIA).

Wiegand technology, running for more than 40 years, lacks in many technical fields that made it mandatory for the experts to search for a better alternative. Problems like lack of signal encryption, making it highly insecure that enabled hackers to intercept transmissions between readers and controllers to execute playback attacks.

Moreover, Wiegand is unsupervised, holds limited distance usage, and the wires are supposed to always remain in good shape without any induced electrical interference. On top of it, Wiegand offers only a one-way protocol that doesn’t allow bi-directional communications. It means that regular tasks like configuration changes & firmware updates are managed directly at the reader, making it a cumbersome job.

How OSDP proves to be a better option than Wiegand?

Offering greater security, accessibility, convenience, and reduced labor, OSDP provides an enormous amount of reliability & data accuracy compared to Wiegand. It carefully sends data using a cyclic redundancy check, ensuring the sent and received data’s accuracy. The AES 128 bit encryption algorithm provides for data security in OSDP.

OSDP also features an interoperable nature, which means that companies are no more restricted to choose a single vendor to buy identification devices compatible with their system. OSDP allows hosting multiple reader devices on the same wire without maintaining separate wires for respective ones resulting in tremendous cost saving in wiring and maintenance.

As compared to wiegand, OSDP offers bi-directional communication that enables OEM companies to deliver more controller centric functionalities and reduce the complexity on the reader front. One such use case is implementing dual authentication that includes a combination of card and biometric to grant access to a cardholder. Here the Biometric templates are no more required to be stored on the readers but on the controller for much safer and secure authentication. Moreover, bi-directional communication in OSDP promises better display functionalities such as flashing the name of a person, event time, or any other parameter from the user profile without any local storage on the reader. In conclusion, the protocol allows the reader to act only as an identification device and enable all user profiles, access privileges, and credential information to be stored only on the controller, resulting in cost reduction and better security.

It also lets the security department to configure and manage the readers, such as pushing firmware or software update to multiple OSDP-enabled card readers simultaneously on a remote basis, a feature that often comes in handy in large organizations.

For more information on OSDP and access control solutions, contact our experts at IDCUBE.