RFID What?!?

Tanner Dabel

4^th Opinion paper

RFID

RFID What?!?

Radio Frequency Identification (aka RFID) actually isn’t a new concept. It’s been around its been around as RFID for at least the last two – three decades and even more if you look at its predecessor technology from as far back as the 1920’s and 30’s. What you might have noticed however, is that RFID technology is currently in the state of rapid devolvement and has become the latest technology trend. What is RFID? Well it’s the fairly simple idea of having a RFID tag in or on something and will respond to radio waves sent by a near by transponder or antenna. In the most general sense, RFID is used to tag and track something. RFID can be coupled with other type of sensors so that it can gather readings of humidity, shock, temperature, light and vibration (among other things). This allows for RFID tagging to be very flexible in its use.

Current uses of RFID technology include; passports, transportation payment, product tracking, animal tracking, authentication, record keeping among many other tasks. RFID has proven to be a cheap and cost efficient way to record information about a certain item or thing. So, now that we’ve had a brief review of what RFID is, let’s get into the nitty gritty of how a business might use leverage RFID to gain a competitive advantage and a few potential pitfalls to RFID technology.

First up, let’s look at the RFID in a companies supply chain. Externally and internally speaking, using RFID is a good cost effective move to keeping a company competitive in today’s world market. As a large company, if you enforce that the suppliers of your products use RFID, shipments could be tracked easier and inventory records become more accurate. This would allow for more automation of some processes within the external aspects of the supply chain dealing with your suppliers. This automation can eliminate the cost human error while increasing productivity. Productivity is increased by the fact that this automation of processes can run near to if not around the clock 24/7. This automation ultimately over time will create a reduction of cost for those suppliers of your products. When this occurs, the suppliers will be able to charge less on their items and yet make the same profit, allowing your company to save when buying from the supplier.

Another benefit mentioned above is that of tracking. With RFID tagging, it is very easy to track shipments weather it be on a ship, truck or on a hand truck just about to be delivered. Your company can see the log of where the items are and when they are expected to reach specific destinations on the path to your stores warehouse. This is helpful because most of the time, the last leg of a trip for an item is via trucking service. There are many people on the road and accidents can happen. For this example, lets say there’s a five car pile up ten miles North on the interstate your truck full of RFID items is on (don’t worry, no one was hurt, just a lot of insurance claims). As the truck approaches the crash site, travel time is lost (and if the truck has to stop, a lot of travel time is lost!) At this point, little can be done about the shipment arriving on time. But, as soon as the truck hits its next check point, those RFID tags will get logged and your company will see there was a delay in reaching the check point. Because of this, the tracking system has already updated its manifest to show when the shipment will hit its next check points and when the shipment will ultimately arrive at the company warehouse. All this information can be communicated without a single person having to do anything outside of what they already were doing. The truck driver keeps their rig moving. The company checks its logs to see when the truck is expected, and the supplier continues to supply goods by filling trucks and sending shipments out. This is called added value to the company. The RFID has allowed for an awful lot of information to be communicated through an automated process. With this new information, a company can plan for the delay and work around it. As the saying goes, “Information is Power” and with this, more information can be recorded through less means of actual human interaction with a higher percentage of accuracy. In the end, this means saved dollars on the bottom line.

Lastly a company can help to better understand its own inventory through the means of RFID tagging. As an inventory control, RFID tags can help keep a better account of the physical inventory than a human could. It is also easier to scan and more can be scanned quicker through the means of RFID tagging. Because of this, internal inventory processes within a company can be streamlined, be more accurate and allow for better efficiency. Again, over the long term, this means more saved dollars and a better looking bottom line for such a company.

Moving on to the some of the more controversial aspects of RFID, let’s discuss such issues as security and privacy. The use of RFID in such things like security badges and building access cards are good examples. On the surface, having RFID used for security might seem like a great idea, but problems have occurred. Not everything is completely peachy with RFID when it comes to security. When using RFID there are some trade offs people sometimes forget, such as a.) RFID can be cracked and hacked and b.) full disclosure isn’t always provided.

RFID currently is susceptible to phenomena called illicit tracking. Meaning, a third party attempts (and sometimes is successful) in gathering information being sent or received by the RFID tag. Most encryption has held up, but where RFID has failed hasn’t been in the encryptions, but rather in bugs that were found and exploited. Once the bugs are known viruses can be used to compromise the information contained on a RFID tag. If the information on the RFID tag is limited, then I’d agree that it is a good idea to use them for security purposes within a company. To ensure that the employee’s right to privacy isn’t being compromised, the security aspect of the RFID technology needs to a.) be strongly encrypted with either a challenge-response authentication (which can be costly), or to a lesser degree, the rolling code scheme and b.) contain only the most necessary information on the tag required. Any extra information beyond that of what is essentially needed runs the risk of being compromised.

The other area where RFID sometimes gets in trouble is what information is being kept on the RFID tag and does the user know of what is all being kept on the RFID tag. This issue isn’t as concerned with security as it is with privacy. Full disclosure of what information is being kept and tracked on the RFID tag is the primary concern. To ensure information isn’t abused, business polices need to be implemented to explain why such information is being collected and how it will be collected. To give a new employee a security badge or building access card without explicitly stating what information is being kept on that badge/card and how that information is being used would be a violation of that employee’s privacy. Once a employee understands what rights to privacy they are giving up in exchange for the card/badge, then I’m entirely ok with this process, but an employee should have the right to know they are being watched and by how.

So as you can see, RFID has many uses and with that some uses are more suitable than others. When it comes to uses that strictly involve the tracking and monitoring of items through the supply chain (e.g. truck loads, or pallets) I feel there are more benefits to warrant such a use and things appear to be very black and white. My recommendation is that it be used for this purpose. However, when it comes other uses that directly involve an individual (such as access cards), things become greyer. When an individual’s rights and privacy are thrown into the equation I begin to question at what degree RFID should be used. With the policy of full disclosure and strong encryption I can reluctantly agree to its usage, but users need to be aware of the technologies pitfalls; weather it be weakness within the technology design or outside influences such as third party eavesdroppers and skimmers. Information is power and knowledge is power, without either, one would be a fool to use any such technology.