Time Attendance Systems, Machines & Software in Dubai & UAE
Time Attendance Systems, Machines & Software in Dubai & UAE
Proximity, MIFARE, DESFire and UHF credentials supplied, encoded and printed in Dubai. Cards are what cover the people biometrics cannot — visitors, contractors, drivers and anyone who must not be enrolled in your biometric database.
A card can be handed to a colleague. That single fact decides where cards belong in an attendance system, and any supplier who tells you otherwise is selling you a problem you will discover on your first payroll audit.
The usual design. Biometric terminal on the main staff entrance, cards for visitors, contractors and vehicles, all reporting into one attendance database. You get identity where it matters and convenience where it does not.
The four families below are not interchangeable. A reader built for 125 kHz proximity cannot read a 13.56 MHz MIFARE card, and choosing the wrong one means replacing readers as well as cards later. This is the decision to get right before you order anything.
| Technology | Frequency | Security | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proximity (EM) | 125 kHz | Low — read‑only, easily cloned | Low‑risk doors, canteen, visitor passes |
| MIFARE Classic | 13.56 MHz | Weak — its cipher is publicly broken | Legacy estates; avoid for new installs |
| MIFARE DESFire | 13.56 MHz | Strong — AES encrypted | The sensible default for new UAE sites |
| HID Prox / iCLASS / SEOS | 125 kHz / 13.56 MHz | Varies by family; SEOS strongest | Existing HID estates, corporate campuses |
| UHF | 860–960 MHz | Low unless paired with a second factor | Vehicle gates, car parks, yard access |
If you are buying new, buy DESFire. MIFARE Classic is still widely sold in this region and still widely installed, but its Crypto‑1 cipher has been publicly broken for years and a card can be copied with inexpensive equipment. DESFire uses AES and costs a little more per card. On a site where attendance feeds payroll, that difference is worth paying.
You can buy the most secure card on the market and still have an open system, because the weak point is frequently the cable between the reader and the door controller rather than the credential itself.
Wiegand sends the credential number unencrypted down the cable. Anyone who can reach the wiring can capture a valid card number and replay it. It remains the default on a great deal of installed hardware in the UAE.
Use it when: you are extending an existing Wiegand estate and the readers are in physically protected positions.
OSDP encrypts the reader‑to‑controller link, supports two‑way communication and lets a reader be monitored and updated remotely. It closes the replay attack Wiegand leaves open.
Use it when: you are installing anything new. The cost difference is negligible and it is now the expected standard.
A card is also an ID badge. We print and encode in one pass, so the card that opens the door is the card on the lanyard — which removes the second credential most companies end up managing by accident.
Photo, name, employee number and company branding printed onto the same card that carries the RFID chip, encoded in the same operation.
Lost cards are the running cost nobody budgets for. We set up a re‑issue process that voids the old credential immediately rather than leaving it live.
Blank and pre‑encoded stock held locally, so onboarding a hundred new workers does not wait on an overseas order.
Often yes, if the new terminals read the same frequency and card family. Send us a photo of the card, any part number printed on it, and the make of your current reader, and we will confirm before you order. Where the existing cards are MIFARE Classic we will usually recommend migrating, because that family’s encryption is publicly broken — but that is a decision about risk, not a technical obstacle.
Proximity cards work at 125 kHz and are essentially read‑only: the card broadcasts a fixed number and nothing more, which makes it cheap and trivially cloneable. MIFARE works at 13.56 MHz, holds data on the card and supports encryption — strongly in the DESFire family, weakly in the older Classic family. The two frequencies are physically incompatible, so a reader for one cannot read the other.
No, and this is the single most important thing to understand before building an attendance system around cards. A card proves that someone is holding a credential, never that they are the person it belongs to. If buddy punching is the problem you are solving, you need a biometric terminal at the entrance; cards then cover visitors, contractors and vehicles alongside it.
Usually yes, and it is worth designing for from the start. The same credential can be read at the entrance, at the attendance terminal, at the car park barrier and at a canteen or locker reader. Long‑range vehicle access is the one case that often needs a separate UHF credential, because the read distance a barrier requires is beyond what a standard card delivers.
Headcount plus a working buffer, which on a high‑turnover site means noticeably more than headcount. Cards are lost, damaged and taken home by leavers. We hold stock locally so you are not ordering in panic, but starting with a sensible buffer avoids a week of manual sign‑in sheets when twenty new workers arrive at once.
Tell us your headcount, which readers you already run and whether the cards need printing as ID badges. You will get a price per card, including encoding and printing, with local stock.