Mobile access has reached an interesting point. For many organizations, the question is no longer “Should we move to mobile?” It’s “How do we actually make it work at scale?”

Recorded at GSX 2026 in Atlanta, I sat down with Matt Bennett, SVP of Digital Transformation at Alert Enterprise, for a conversation about what happens after an organization decides to deploy mobile access.

We dig into one of the industry’s biggest challenges: moving beyond the pilot and actually driving adoption across thousands of users. That means treating mobile access as more than a credential technology. Successful deployments require communication, change management, internal champions, launch planning and a clear explanation of why the organization is making the change.

We also challenge the traditional cost comparison between a plastic badge and a mobile credential. The better question may be: What does your entire badge issuance program actually cost? Once you account for printing, distribution, temporary badges, lifecycle management and all the manual work surrounding a physical credential, the economics start looking very different.

And ultimately, that’s where the real value of mobile may be found. The tap at the door is easy to see. The bigger transformation is everything happening behind it: turning credential issuance into a digital workflow connected to the identity lifecycle.

Matt and I discuss:

• Why mobile adoption is fundamentally a change-management challenge
• How organizations can move from a small pilot to enterprise-wide adoption
• Why the phone itself may be the least interesting part of mobile access
• How to think differently about the economics of mobile credentials
• The hidden operational cost of temporary and replacement badges
• Why legacy hardware doesn’t necessarily make mobile an all-or-nothing project
• How organizations can approach mobile as a practical, multi-year migration rather than trying to “boil the ocean”

If your organization is already discussing mobile access, this conversation is less about why you should consider it and much more about how to get there successfully.

Featuring:
Phil Coppola, PSP | Mobile Evangelist, HID
Matt Bennett | SVP, Digital Transformation, Alert Enterprise

Disclosure: This content was produced by me, in my capacity as an HID Employee. I am also a board-certified PSP (Physical Security Professional) by the ASIS International Organization.

Is Mobile Access really just replacing a plastic badge with a phone?

If all you’re looking at is what happens at the door, it can certainly seem that way. You present a credential, the reader recognizes it, and the door opens.

But that’s probably the least interesting part of Mobile Access.

In this episode, Phil Coppola, PSP, Mobile Evangelist at HID, looks beyond the tap at the reader to explore the bigger opportunity behind mobile: automating credential provisioning, connecting physical access with enterprise identity systems, applying modern cybersecurity and Zero Trust principles, reducing the administrative burden of traditional badging, and using mobile as a catalyst to modernize legacy access control infrastructure.

Phil also tackles one of the most common misconceptions about Mobile Access: going mobile doesn’t mean eliminating physical ID badges. Instead, organizations can separate the visual identification function of the badge from the electronic key used to access the building, allowing them to transition at their own pace.

The real question isn’t whether your plastic badges still work.

It’s whether you would design your credential program the same way if you were starting from scratch today.

Because Mobile Access isn’t simply a credential project. It’s a digital transformation project.

Disclosure: This content was produced by me, in my capacity as an HID Employee. I am also a board-certified PSP (Physical Security Professional) by the ASIS International Organization.

In this episode, Xander, Jeremy and I talk about what it really means to become an evangelist in your industry. It is not about having the loudest voice, the slickest pitch, or the best product demo. It starts with understanding the foundation deeply enough that you can make complicated ideas easier for other people to understand.

Using our experience in physical security as the backdrop, we break down why evangelism is really about teaching, translating, telling the truth about trade-offs, and helping people make better decisions. Whether you are in security, technology, sales, or any field where you want to become a trusted voice, this conversation is about building credibility by making other people smarter.