7 ms·
* The circle makes it hard to see at a glance if the face matches the badge, this is a big deal. * The employee number should be on the front, because this is
by kayfox 13y ago
* The circle makes it hard to see at a glance if the face matches the badge, this is a big deal.
* The employee number should be on the front, because this is often needed for identifying people who security cant stop (for whatever reason), but are doing bad things.
* Printing on the back is expensive, the badge printers that do this cost often twice as much. Printing color is even more expensive, your talking increasing the cost of the badge by about a third. This also leads to other problems like heavy head wear because of the smart card contact, having to define avoidance areas because of the same and jamming issues with the added complexity of using the card flipper.
* Employment classification (Employee, Intern, Vendor Name, Partner, etc) should be printed in text on the front.
* Smaller companies would be encouraged to avoid printing the company logo or name on the badge, as this tells people where it will work.
* Same with the address, and the cost of replacement and expedience means returning the badge is useless. This wasn't true when Motorola Flexpass badges were first rolled out at MS, but its true now.
* Badge photos need to be standardized for various security reasons.
* Your current badge does already emphasize your first name, its not as prominent on yours as it was on mine, but it changes from time to time as they much with the access control software.
Where I'm coming from: I am a security engineer, I previously worked on physical security management and had started out in the industry at Microsoft. I work on systems that print hard cards for a paying hobby.
PS, I was fired from MS for posting an image of myself online where my badge was clear enough to copy. Might be something to check on.
- aalpbalkan 13y agoSorry to hear this happened to you :-/ You have a lot of valid points here. I just wanted to show we probably don't need all those details on the badge and made a proof of concept. From now on, designers can take on and do something better. (I'm not a designer. )
- kayfox 13y agoIt happens. One of the interesting things is that I work for a company that for the most part is still small enough to not need badges for people to recognize other employees. We have largely resisted issuing badges with photos because of questions on how to do it while increasing security rather than decreasing it.
- gdw2 13y agoWhere I work, we have our picture on BOTH sides. If you carry your badge on a lanyard, half the time the back is showing and the front is hidden.
- kayfox 13y agoAt Microsoft almost noone wears their badges on lanyards, most employees carry them in their wallets. There are lanyards and attachments that sorta work this issue out, but in the end it comes down to training employees to keep their badges facing out. This somewhat works for Boeing.
- michaelt 13y agoMicrosoft can't get people to wear their badges visible at all, and you think it's feasible to get people to turn their badges around manually? :) I don't see what you lose by printing both sides.
- kayfox 13y agoSometimes badges have stuff on the back like card codes, punch centering marks and magstripes that make printing on the back a bad idea. In Boeing case, its because you are not allowed in many places without a badge somewhere above the waist that is visible. Higher security employers elicit higher security practices from their employees.
- michaelt 13y agoMost security cards I've been issued with are laminar - there's a thinner printed front part glued to a thicker RFID back part. So making the card double-sided just means printing two fronts and sticking them on both sides.
- count 13y agoMicrosoft badges are/appear to be smart cards, not laminar. Easy enough to print on both sides though.
- nemesisj 13y agoOK, I'll bite. - Why does the circle make it harder to see at a glance? This doesn't seem to be true at all. - If you can't stop someone, you're not going to be able to read the number on the badge. I don't see any reason why your employee number should be on the front. It definitely doesn't enhance security at all. People faking badges can fake numbers too. - I'm not sure about your points re: cost or smaller employers, I mean, sure, but I can't imagine that cost would be a huge barrier - more likely changing out equipment would be. - Badget photo backgrounds probably need to be plain, but as long as it's a photo you can be reasonably recognised from, I'm not sure what it matters. Simply by growing a beard you can become pretty hard to recognise from your badge photo from 5 years ago. - I agree that the employment classification is probably good to have on the badge, but only because of annoying BigCo obsession about it. In practice, I'm not sure why it would matter much. When I worked at a big company it was just a political tool to remind consultants they were inferior.
- sliverstorm 13y agoWhy does the circle make it harder to see at a glance? I think I see what he is saying. It takes my eyes a moment or three longer to "digest" the person I am looking at in the concept examples, and to my non-artistic not-a-photographer mind, it looks like an issue of framing.
- rickyc091 13y agoYep, I think that's probably it. When have you seen a person with their head tilted one direction in an ID photo. When is the background any color other than white as well? I think the Ahmet Balkan sample ID at the top of the post would be the most accurate identification photo.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThe other thing for me, I think, is the circle matches the shape of a person's face. Obviously I don't think the circle is a face, but it's easier to quickly resolve a circle inside a square, than a circle inside a circle. (Don't get me wrong, it does look nicer when round.)
- BlackDeath3 13y ago>I was fired from MS for posting an image of myself online where my badge was clear enough to copy. I won't ask you to go into any detail that you don't feel comfortable with, but is there more to this? Special circumstances? The above, out-of-context, sounds very... draconian. I'm really just curious.
- not_kurt_godel 13y agoI really wouldn't be surprised if this really was the primary reason for firing a security engineer. A person who carelessly compromises sensitive information is someone you want as far away as possible from having access to your security systems, not to mention building them.
- lmm 13y agoHow is someone's badge security information? Anyone can walk up to the building entrance and see several people's badges on the way, surely security can't depend on keeping those secret.
- polymatter 13y agowell, depends if you're concerned with security or appearance of security. Security engineers need to do both.
- not_kurt_godel 13y agoBy that same logic, passwords wouldn't be security information either because anyone could videotape someone typing theirs in at a coffee shop from afar. But, I suspect that's rare because it's really difficult in practice. The purpose of many security policies is to increase the amount of effort an attacker must go through.
- BlackDeath3 13y agoI don't know of any company that encourages the display of passwords around their employees' necks.
- emilsundberg 13y agoAnd these points should justify an ugly badge?
- kayfox 13y agoWho said they are justifying an ugly badge, is this a false dichotomy where only the two badge designs exist?
- sriramk 13y agoCarried a MSFT blue badge for six years. On the employee number - if security needs it, they can flip the badge around. I needed it once in six years, when I needed to type it into some internal tool. On the employee status, that is done with badge color. Blue badges are FTE only.
- jhenkens 13y agoIntern's get Blue as well, but are, for most intents and purposes, considered FTE's.
- superafroman 13y agoRE: the employee number - You may not have physical access to the card, e.g. you only have CCTV footage of the employee doing whatever they're doing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bentcorner 13y ago> The circle makes it hard to see at a glance if the face matches the badge, this is a big deal. Why is that? Curiously enough, I know some MS employees and many of them carry their badge in their wallet. In the years I've known them they haven't mentioned anything about problems with security.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 13y ago> Printing on the back is expensive, the badge printers that do this cost often twice as much. Printing color is even more expensive, your talking increasing the cost of the badge by about a third. You already have blue vs. green badges, so you have to print color either way. In most configurations I've seen, the badge is designed so you wear it on a lanyard around your neck (approximately no one actually does this) so it has to be printed front and back anyway since it might get turned around. I'm surprised if printing front and back is a prohibitive expense for Microsoft, land of the free sodas and offices with doors that close. It's not a prohibitive expense for more frugal companies. > Employment classification (Employee, Intern, Vendor Name, Partner, etc) should be printed in text on the front Everyone who sees badges already knows the color codes, and no one else needs to know.
- kayfox 13y agoNot everyone sees color.
- danielnaab 13y agoUnder what scenario would having an ID number be more useful in identifying someone versus just their name combined with their face? And in the example you give of a security officer not having time to stop someone, are they really going to grok a 6, 8, or 10 digit ID instead of the easier to read name?
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago> Under what scenario would having an ID number be more useful in identifying someone versus just their name combined with their face? Prison?
- greatsuccess 13y agoPS, I was fired from MS for posting an image of myself online where my badge was clear enough to copy.. Yeah i seriously doubt that
- ibmthrowaway218 13y agoThe unique number printed on the card doesn't have to be the employee number, it just has to be unique to each person and stored alongside their employee number. That retains the ability to uniquely identify people without stopping them (assuming it's not faked) whilst not leaking their employee number.
- cabalamat 13y agoMore importantly: * the current badges aren't broken (AFAIK); is it really a priority to fix them?