The case of the unlocking door

Tim Ward posted this story on Slashdot [http://www.slashdot.org] by Tim Ward and is reproduced here with his permission. If you have an amusing IT story, submit it to me at [email protected] and I’ll post it here with attribution.

Tim worked at a company where the front door was controlled by a lock that opened when it detected the proximity of an authorized RFID tag. This allowed members of staff to enter and exit the premises without having to physically swipe themselves in.

A member of his staff resigned and left the company. Several days after the employee left the receptionist noted that the front door was continually unlocking itself. Investigating further it was determined that the resigned staff member’s RFID tag was responsible for the door continuously unlocking itself.

When he resigned, the member of staff had not been asked to return his RFID tag. Noting this oversight he had mailed it back to the company. Of course as no one remembered to ask the guy for the tag when he left, no one remembered to disable the tag in the system.

The mysterious unlocking was explained when the letter containing the RFID tag was found in the HR department’s pigeon-hole, located less than a meter from the organization’s front door.