HID Global Facilitates Secure Network Access For More Than 85,000 U.S. Government Employees

  • Feb 15, 2011

HID Global, provider of solutions for the delivery of secure identity, recently announced it has secured an 85,000-unit order from a major U.S. government agency for the company’s OMNIKEY contact smart card readers for network authentication. 

“This significant order from a major U.S. agency re-asserts HID Global’s position as one of the premier providers of physical and logical access control solutions for the government,” said Anthony Ball, senior vice president, Identity and Access Management (IAM) with HID Global.  “With our growing product family and recent acquisitions of ActivIdentity and LaserCard, we now offer one of the industry’s broadest security product portfolios for government and enterprise customers. Our offering includes RFID cards and readers used for physical access, as well as smart cards, readers and middleware used for secure identity assurance and network authentication, plus secure card printing and issuance solutions.  HID products are trusted by millions of government employees, across hundreds of agencies, worldwide.”

HID Global will be providing the U.S. government with 85,000 OMNIKEY USB contact-based smart-card readers.  The readers will be used in conjunction with an individual’s identity card, which incorporates a contact smart card module to authenticate the user during network logon. 

The OMNIKEY readers support the U.S. Federal Government’s smart card program, including Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards that are mandated by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), and the commonly used Common Access Card (CAC) credential.  Both cards address requirements for federally issued credentials that U.S. Government employees and contractors must use to gain physical access to secured buildings and logical access to government computer resources.  More than 5 million credentials have been issued by the government, to date.

HID Global’s government offerings are designed to help federal agencies defend against security threats and meet compliance requirements while streamlining their infrastructures and simplifying the user experience.  The company’s OMNIKEY solutions feature the industry’s longest warranties and highest reliability specifications, and include both RFID- and contact-based readers for use with desktop and mobile devices.

OMNIKEY readers are also used with a variety of contact and contactless smart cards by security-conscious businesses and organizations in commercial enterprise applications and in heavily regulated industries including utilities and healthcare.  By enabling the re-use of physical access credentials in IT authentication scenarios, OMNIKEY readers facilitate simple and cost-effective while highly secure two-factor PC authentication.

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