AI has already converged physical and digital security into a unified attack surface, while transforming both attack and defense capabilities. Organizations protecting high-value physical and/or digital assets, such as hospitals, banks, and government entities, need to upgrade and integrate their access controls to block AI-powered threats—everything from deepfaked access credentials to building management system takeovers. 

With these new threats in play, making access decisions with incomplete data has simply become too risky. “Trusted arrival” refers to modern, AI-assisted automation that provides real-time identity context integrated with existing access control systems so that every access decision is informed, validated, and tracked. 

This article introduces trusted arrival concepts, capabilities, and considerations for organizations that face AI-powered access threats.

Key takeaways

• Trusted arrival platforms connect identity, access, and monitoring capabilities within a single operational workflow.
• In trusted arrival scenarios, every access decision is comprehensively informed, verified, and auditable for improved safety, security, and compliance.
• Organizations most in need of trusted arrival capabilities include government and critical infrastructure, education, and healthcare. 
• Trusted arrival supports compliance requirements to safeguard both physical facilities and digital assets from unauthorized access, damage, and exfiltration. 
• Siloed physical and digital access solutions significantly increase business risk in the current climate of AI-powered access threats that span digital and physical environments.

What is trusted arrival?

Trusted arrival is a unified physical/digital platform to orchestrate secure access. Leveraging current infrastructure, it connects identity, access, and monitoring within a single operational workflow. 

Critical trusted arrival features include:

• Pre-arrival vetting to confirm a visitor’s identity and reason for entry before they reach the secure perimeter.
• Identity-aware entry based on mobile credentials that include real-time context.
• Automated notifications to guide visitors and coordinate escorts or sponsors.
• Operational visibility on access events so security staff can track each event with full identity context and logging.
• Continuous, zero-trust identity verification with automated, risk-based checks and time/location/role restrictions—not just static badges.
• Built-in credential management and validation, including integration with federated identity solutions (e.g., Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Auth0).
• AI-based behavioral analysis, including scheduled versus actual arrival times, time limits, and anomaly detection.
• Touchless, low-friction check-in/entry experiences.

Through advanced AI and automation, a trusted arrival platform offers an innovative, tailored solution to enhance threat intelligence, incident response, and risk mitigation for businesses facing today’s AI-powered access threats. 

“When we were developing [trusted arrival] programs for critical infrastructure, we modeled it after zero trust,” says Jeffrey Friedman, CEO at Fortifye. “We just applied cybersecurity methodologies into physical security and then created software to support that.”  

Who needs trusted arrival capabilities today?

Trusted arrival capabilities are most important in environments where “access” is a continuous operational concern encompassing people, identity, and physical infrastructure. 

Organizations that benefit most from trusted arrival capabilities for efficiency and risk reduction include:

• Government agencies
• Military installations
• Education campuses, including K-12 schools
• Healthcare organizations
• Critical infrastructure environments
• Manufacturing facilities
• Data centers and IT infrastructure operators
• Corporate campuses

Access challenges at these kinds of facilities include:

• Managing temporary access across a secure perimeter for large numbers of people, such as at events.
• Coordinating access decisions across multiple buildings/locations (e.g., for vendors) without reliance on ad hoc methods like radios and phone calls.
• Balancing a welcoming, visitor-friendly environment with security and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Blind spots and incomplete audit trails, such as at remote sites or utility installations.

What are current and emerging access compliance requirements?

AI-driven trusted arrival capabilities that integrate and extend traditional physical and cybersecurity are increasingly important not just to mitigate AI-powered threats and risks, but also to meet compliance demands from regulators, customers, and other stakeholders.

Core requirements and guidelines for merged physical/digital security in regulated and critical infrastructure environments can include:

• Controlled access and perimeter security with role-based access controls, robust physical barriers, and special protection for utility infrastructure like telecommunications cables and water lines.
• Continuous monitoring, such as 24×7 video surveillance with no blind spots, motion/intrusion detection alarms in critical areas, and auditable entry logs.
• Pre-arrival screening, visitor badges, and continuous escorts for visitors.
• Restricted access, secure transit, and secure disposal for servers, storage hardware and physical media that contains sensitive data.
• Compliance or alignment with a trusted governance framework like ISO 27001, NIST SP 800-161 for supply chain risk management, or Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) for defense suppliers and other US federal contractors. 

Some critical infrastructure segments (e.g., transportation, telecommunications, energy, utilities) must also meet targeted requirements for physical security and cybersecurity, including guidance from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) or Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

What are indications your business needs trusted arrival capabilities?

Where digital identity and physical access systems remain disconnected, security teams are at a disadvantage and business risk increases. 

Facilities must process ongoing access requests all day long from visitors, vendors, contractors, and guests. But disjointed workflows and/or legacy systems often leave security staff to make decisions based on assumptions, without a real-time view of who is expected, checked out, and cleared to proceed on-site. 

Challenges with outdated access solutions include:

• Security operators must make access decisions with incomplete and/or delayed information. They may frequently need to verify access without knowing for sure who is expected, pre-vetted, cleared, on a blacklist, etc.
• Coordinating escort activities takes multiple phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, manual log entries, etc. Escort workflows have minimal to no automation. 
• Staff need to access multiple separate systems (visitor management, physical access control (PACS), HR, etc. to verify an individual. 
• There is no real-time, zero-trust identity verification across checkpoints. Often only a badge check or similar process is used.

Capabilities that security operators need to make informed access and authorization decisions at points of entry include:

• A unified data source to confidently validate identity and access authorization. 
• Real-time visibility on who is authorized to be on-site, and why they need access. 
• Real-time context for critical access decisions across checkpoints, such as pre-arrival screening and trust scoring.
• The ability to coordinate escorts and manage peoples’ movement across checkpoints without radio checks, phone calls, or other delays.

Trusted arrival capabilities also benefit site visitors by pre-verifying their identity and access credentials, eliminating time-consuming manual check-ins and redundant procedures, and clarity on where they are authorized to go in the facility. The TSA PreCheck program that expedites screening and check-in for pre-approved travelers illustrates these benefits.

An AI-powered trusted arrival solution functions like an intelligent overlay on current/traditional PACS to streamline identity, admission, and operator decision-making. It provides continuous verification, intelligent routing, and comprehensive operator support to improve safety and security, reduce risk, and enhance site visitor experiences.

What’s next?

For more guidance on this topic, listen to Episode 159 of The Virtual CISO Podcast with guest Jeffrey Friedman, CEO at Fortifye.