Who Invented the Proximity Card

Architecture and Background

Who Invented the Proximity Card? Michael L.

Vulnerability Analysis

Davis Who invented the first Proximity Card System? And what security company dismissed it as a mere magician's trick?

Exploitation and Demonstrations

And what does this have to do with goldfish? Stop by and take a trip down memory lane as we explore the history of a prolific inventor who was one of the founding fathers of the physical security industry.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

(Hint: This person was a musician with perfect pitch whose first patent was for an automatic garage door opener.) Michael L. Davis is a veteran of the physical security industry since 1978 and has worked for a various companies including a company that built PDP 11-based access control systems to secure nuclear power plants, an access control card manufacturer that specializes in legacy card technologies including some of the first RFID credentials, and several other security industry manufacturers including panel and reader manufacturers. His first computer was a Digi-Comp 1 toy computer made from plastic that was programmed with straws and had a 3-bit capacity (see ) that he won on a kid's TV show called Wonderama with Sonny Fox. His second personal computer was a surplus IBM 1620 (see ), a BCD-based computer that used punched cards and core memory which he was forced to scrap because he couldn't afford to pay its electric bills. Nowadays, Michael works in the Intellectual Property Department of a major security product manufacturer playing in the patent world.