Hi all,

I’m currently looking at a retrofit project for a commercial site that wants to ditch their old Wiegand readers for something more secure—ideally OSDP v2 to meet their new IT insurance requirements.

The headache is the existing cabling. It’s mostly unshielded, and as we know, OSDP over long runs can be finicky without proper twisted pairs. I’m trying to avoid a full re-wire if possible, but I'm worried about the data integrity for their higher-security zones.

Has anyone here had success using OSDP converters on legacy cables for high-stakes areas? Or is it always a case of "pull new copper or don't bother" when it comes to meeting modern audit standards?

Would love to hear some field experience on where you draw the line between 'secure enough' and a total infrastructure overhaul.

Yeh you got to be careful due to data. Its a big risk but always recommend to recable if the cable isnt twisted pair or screened

17 hours ago, shabir said:

Yeh you got to be careful due to data. Its a big risk but always recommend to recable if the cable isnt twisted pair or screened

Completely agree on the risk, @shabir Data integrity is the non-negotiable part here. The dilemma is always the cost/time of a full re-cable vs. the client's push for immediate 'compliance'.

I’ve been looking into some OSDP transparent converters that claim to handle the encryption at the end-points specifically to mitigate the noise issues on older non-twisted pairs. It seems like a potential middle ground for sites where the physical infrastructure is just too painful to rip out, but the audit trail still needs to be AES-128.

Have you ever found a specific converter or a signal conditioning setup that actually held up in an audit without a full re-wire, or is the consensus in the field still 'new copper or bust' for high-security zones?

I've never heard of it nor been asked about it