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Challenges and Web-based Solutions for Advanced Photo Card Production

Industrial South America Article
Release Date: September 1999

Bruce D. Bianco, President, Synercard Corporation

Overview

While traditional applications such as membership, employment, licensing, social program delivery and credit/bank access are more commonly known, new media in advanced plastics and technologies such as magnetic stripes, 2D bar codes, digital imaging and chip cards are leading the industry towards a future of a more sophisticated and secure means of identification.

Not only is the application making a shift in the market, so is issuance. Peter Smith, Worldwide Marketing Manager for 3M states that "In virtually every country in the world, identification cards are issued through third party card bureaus. Only in the US do they do their own issuance." And Smith goes on to say "There is now a dramatic shift toward card bureaus, for two main reasons - digitization and the broad acceptance by corporate-America of the Internet."

As more companies, agencies and government departments throughout the world intensify their efforts to procure advanced photo card technologies, two main issues emerge as paramount: security and cost.

Current estimates suggests that the number of smart cards or smart tokens in use worldwide will rise to about 1.2 billion within two years, an astounding ten-fold increase since 1997. Individuals will carry multiple cards for banking, for work access, for healthcare, for vehicle registration and so on. With this staggering increase comes the equally staggering exponential increase in fraud.

Consequently, it's easy to understand a move towards secure service bureaus or to centralizing the card issuance function within an organization. However, at the same time as companies and governments move to bring card issuance back to a safe, centralized location, the demand for cards from remote locations -- branch plants, distributed government offices -- is increasing.

Somewhat ironically, the solution to this paradox lies in the most public of communications vehicles - the Internet. As most organizations do not maintain dedicated phone lines between head office and the field, the worldwide web offers the most feasible means of transmitting individual information required to produce ID cards. The most important consideration is, of course, the degree of security and accuracy which can be applied to these transmissions. Encryption technologies are extremely advanced and becoming more so every week. Dedicated servers at either end of the electronic pipeline can complete the security infrastructure to asure users that data travelling back and forth between head office and the branch operation is encrypted and decrypted with no loss of integrity and with no unwanted interception.

Cards should be able to be compiled, produced and returned by intercompany mail or courier by the next working day to ensure that business operations and the introduction of new employees or new card users are not interrupted.

Assuming security issues can be addressed (and that presupposes extremely robust and easy-to-use software with advanced encryption and digital signature recognition capabilities), the next major concern is that of cost.

There was a sense, which still exists in some places, that advanced cards "cost what they cost". As the use of ID cards increases, the overall expense of producing them starts to become extremely important. Buying 1 million of something is a very different matter than buying 10,000 of the same thing. This is particularly true with both government departments with limited resources and with companies who are becoming much more vigilant about operating expenses.

It appears evident that equipping branch sites with photographic and reprographic production facilities to create cards for that location alone is not a cost-effective option. The equipment is often difficult to use, difficult to maintain and represents a capital expenditure which is not recoverable and which is not cost-justified.

Ideally, organizations should be able to significantly reduce the cost-per-unit by reducing or eliminating equipment purchases and the often-hidden cost of operating and maintaining it.

The future of advanced cards assured. The future for producing them lies with the Internet.

Synercard Corporation

Synercard Corporation is a leading supplier of innovative card personalization and advanced card solutions for identification and electronic commerce applications. Synercard's focus is on the emerging market opportunities in the areas of Internet and Intranet-based card personalization for photo cards, and the use of smart cards in secure electronic commerce applications.

Synercard's flagship product, Asure ID^TM, is an Internet-based card management, personalization and issuance software that combines the power of smart card (Asure ID Card), biometrics, digital imaging, Internet and Intranet networking, and Symmetric Key Cryptography technologies.

Before Asure ID, capturing and issuing cards for individuals in rural or branch locations required dedicated networks and expensive equipment to be purchased and maintained.

Now with Asure ID, Synercard streamlines, automates and secures the process of card personalization and issuance.

Asure ID is a powerful, secure, flexible and simple to use software solution which brings security, human resource, healthcare and educational administrators the means to capture and register card-holder information at remote decentralized and convenient locations, while managing and issuing cards at secure central card issuance facilities. With Asure ID, even organizations that do not wish to purchase expensive card issuance equipment can benefit from the advancements in card technology by contracting with a Synercard Secure Authorized Card Bureau.

To best understand how the Asure ID system comes together to create a new breed of internet-ready, remote card personalization and issuance solutions let's have a more in-depth look at how it is deployed. The following case studies illustrate two very different implementations of the Asure ID system, both of which highlight Asure ID's ability to deliver cost effective and powerful solutions while adhering to very specific and demanding requirements.

Asure ID Case Studies

1) National ID Inc.
National ID Inc. is a fully government subsidized Canadian corporation with a head office in Ottawa, and provincial offices in the capital city of each province. National ID Inc. was created by the Canadian government for the purpose of creating, issuing and maintaining a national ID card for all citizens. They have been given the task of determining the architectural needs to make their operation as cost effective as possible, and then evaluating various software and hardware solutions available in the marketplace and finally implementing their solution.

National ID Inc. plans on opening 100-150 "badging stations" per province. These badging stations will be spread out over various cities and rural areas, usually located in Post Offices or Ministry of Transportation License Bureaus. The head and provincial offices of National ID all have their computer systems linked via broadband WAN technology (bridges, routers and leased fractional T1 lines), with badging stations dialing-up to a server running at the provincial headquarters.

Soon after the initial specifications for the project were released, planners at National ID Inc. realized that there were a number of shortfalls with the current system. Specifically, the team did not take into account an efficient means of bringing information into the system from existing databases. The need for security was not addressed and additionally, the budget required to simply equip each head office with communications and printing equipment was beyond the scope of the intended expenditure.

It was clear that a new approach would be needed.

National ID Inc. began searching for a more flexible and robust solution by first redefining their requirements. After weeks of research and conferences with various technology experts, the project's requirements were expanded to include the following:

• The system must be able to import information from existing databases.
• The system must make use of existing phone lines and network connections to avoid having to purchase or rent costly new lines, especially in rural areas.
• The system must be able to store and transmit the information in a secure, encrypted manner.
• The system must support remote card personalization (registration of citizen), to avoid purchasing costly card issuance equipment for each site.

After redefining their focus, the team at National ID began speaking with system integrators about implementing a solution. After closely examining the various products and services available in the marketplace, National ID made the decision to integrate Asure ID and Asure ID Server, as the software that their system would rely on. There were a variety of factors that influenced National ID's decision:

• Asure ID's built-in card design tools would make it simple to integrate with existing graphics designed for the national ID card project.
• Asure ID's Import/Export wizards provided an extremely cost-effective solution to data entry, allowing operators to merge information from existing databases.
• The Asure ID system is designed to work with a minimum of only one card printer, regardless of geographic disparity between capture sites. This results in the saving of a significant capital investment in hardware, and makes more efficient use of existing issuance and distribution centers.
• Asure ID communicates securely over LAN, WAN and Internet connections, satisfying the corporation's requirements for both secure communication and use of existing lines. By using dial-up Internet connections instead of dedicated or leased lines to connect capture sites in remote locations, further savings can be realized.
• Ease of use and short learning curve when compared with other available solutions ensures maximum productivity.
• Although it outperforms all of the competition on a feature-by-feature basis, Asure ID represents the lowest per-unit cost of any available card management software.

The implementation of the system, performed in partnership between National ID. Inc. and their chosen systems integrator, consisted of the following:

• Asure ID Server management software running at 15 selected locations nationwide; each with dedicated Internet connections and card issuance equipment.
• Asure ID software package, with video camera and signature capture pad, at each capture site and provincial headquarters.
• Activation of dial-up Internet accounts for each badging station in remote areas (outside of National ID's WAN).
• Employees assigned to each badging station for data capture and entry, as well as one at each provincial office to import data from existing databases.

Having successfully answered their specific needs, in a cost effective and easily deployable manner, National ID Inc. is confident that the solutions offered by Synercard's products are not only the best available choice, but also the only one suited to their demanding requirements.

2) Canadian Museum of Nature
Having recently moved to a new, larger facility just outside of Ottawa, the Canadian Museum of Nature needed to address its access control and identification needs. Employees had been assigned proximity cards for entrance into the building, but security policies also required the display at all times of identification cards. The museum sought a way to manage and distribute to its employees photo ID cards that they could affix to their proximity cards.

Although the museum was equipped with a modern computer network and dedicated high-speed Internet access, there were no facilities or resources for the production of photo ID cards. The museum, with approximately 500 employees, did not feel that it was worthwhile to invest the capital that would be required to purchase and operate a costly card printer and badging system.They did, however, feel that it was important to have complete control over the badging process, since they have a variety of departments and ID card designs, as well as a number of employees whose departmental status would be changing in the near future.

In essence, what the museum required was a virtual system, one that had all the features of a more standard system, but did not involve the upfront costs and recurring maintenance issues. Asure ID allowed the museum to take advantage of their existing computer hardware and Internet connection, and an authorized Synercard Secure Card Bureau provided card-printing services accessible to the Museum via the Internet. Deployment of the system at the museum's site was completed in less than twenty minutes, and the staff was trained in its use in under an hour. Whenever the museum had new or updated cards to issue, they were securely transmitted, using Asure ID's robust Internet capabilities, to the card bureau's Asure ID Server, as transparently as if it were on the same LAN.

By completely avoiding additional hardware purchases, as well as configuration and maintenance issues, the Museum of Nature saved a great deal of time and money while at the same time enjoying the freedom and flexibility that they required. The Museum of Nature was so impressed that when the pilot test ended and development of the initial commercial Asure ID package completed, they were the first customers to purchase Asure ID and put it into everyday use.

Conclusion

The above case studies illustrate how the Asure ID system has been designed to answer to the most demanding requirements of the photo card industry in a modern, networked society. Powerful, secure, and completely transportable across any computer network, Asure ID breathes new life into the card management and personalization industry, while maintaining the attractive pricing schedule of a 'no frills' type package. With the card industry just beginning to understand the impact of Internet-based networks, Synercard leads the field in ushering in the new era of faster, cheaper and more flexible card personalization.