A commercial version of the PLAI Agent will be demonstrated by the PSIA at ISC West 2018 in Las Vegas. Johnson Controls (Software House), Kastle Systems, and Princeton Identity will show the interoperability and exchange of identity information between disparate systems. “Having a commercial PLAI Agent, available to any company, is an important milestone for PLAI,” said David Bunzel, Executive Director of the PSIA. “It will enable Physical Access Control System (PACS) vendors to have an effective solution for bridging otherwise incompatible systems, saving considerable time in integration, and costs to enterprise customers.”
The PLAI Agent was developed jointly by Johnson Controls and Dublin, Ireland-based Cruatech, a new member of the PSIA. It will be available to vendors from either company prior to ISC West. “As an integrator, we are often challenged with client acquisitions and the need to quickly establish a unified security ecosystem.” said Mike Mathes, Executive Vice President of Convergint Technologies and Chairman of the PSIA. “PLAI offers a means to quickly support disparate systems in a robust and reliable manner.”
Effective identity management
As identity becomes a more critical feature of security systems, finding ways to manage credentials, permissions, limit duplication of records, and eliminating ‘orphans’ left over when an employee leaves a company is essential. PLAI is an elegant means to address many of these issues. “PLAI provides an effective option to reduce problems related to integration compatibility, upgrades, and synchronisation which plague the industry today. This is good for both the customer as well as the manufacturers,” notes Jason Ouellette, General Manager of Access Control for Johnson Controls.
“Further, PLAI reduces the impact of conflict inherent to the replication of personnel and credential data, while giving an authoritative control of records which can span PACS systems and other integrations to reduce risks in activities such as off boarding.”
The PSIA has seen growing momentum for commercial implementations of PLAI. Already the U.S. Department of Justice, The Washington Post, and Corporate Executive Board (CEB) have utilised PLAI. In addition, Microsoft is planning to incorporate PLAI into their security ecosystem. There is a growing list of other organisations which are planning PLAI implementations in the government, financial services, electronics, industrial, and bottling industries.