Secure Identity Solutions - An Industry Overview
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HID Global is a global leader in manufacturing secure identity solutions that offer people convenient access to physical and digital infrastructure that can be identified, verified and tracked digitally.
In an exclusive interview with siliconindia, Wei Jin Lee, Regional Director, Secure Issuance - Asia Pacific, HID Global, shares his insights about the current secure identity solutions industry in India, the emerging trends, and technology innovations.
My role includes business development, involving in operations and business partnerships. Personally, I have been in this industry for 20 years. I took over APAC role in 2014. I still remember, in the first quarter of 2014 I came to India, it was the first country that I visited after taking over the APAC role. Prior to this, I was responsible for South-East Asia role. So India was one of my first destination and we visited 6 cities within 5 days. Now, India has become my regular place of visit. Before this trip, I renewed my passport & India VISA as well. During that, I was astonished to see that I had so many Indian VISA stamps. Back then, every 3 months you need to apply VISA; and this year, I’m enjoying multiple entries Visa. So India is now one of key focus.
At HID, we focus on identity solutions. Our mission is to empower the trusted identity for global businesses and their people. All solutions that we provide are around trusted identity. We want to ensure security for all the happenings online and people to move anywhere safely. Everything can be identified accurately and determine who you are.
Within HID, there are several business units. The entire company goes by business unit structure, because the thought focus is important. Every business unit focuses on what they are doing. At the same time, higher management concentrates on how to provide proper integrated solutions among these business units. From our side, our business unit is called secure issuance. What this business unit does is provide secure identity card solutions. When you talk about issue identity card, it’s not only personalization. It’s how to securely issue trusted identity documents.
One of our key products is ID Card Printer. Coming to the ecosystem, ID card printer is the most important component. When we talk about ID card printer, we are clear worldwide leader in this aspect. Our product spectrum covers entry level to professional industry level. Nobody in this world has more offering than us in this industry. I was in our country last week and discussing about the comparison in this industry; so we found that among all our competitors we were the leaders. Why I say we are clear leader is because we are successful and are the most experienced. US Green Card is using our solutions from 20 years. This is definitely a testimony for us. It is one of the most challenging identity card and everyone hope to hold a US Green Card. There are smart people who try to counterfeit. But if somebody can hold a project for 20 years, that is really a testimony for us. They just renewed their contract with HID. Other than in US, we have a huge success in Latin America. There we have many driving licence projects. US, Latin America, Europe and Middle-East – any major project from these regions will no doubt come to HID. In APAC, from Japan, Korea, China, Australia, to South-East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia; South Asian countries like Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India; within these regions quite many number of important projects are for well recognised ID cards issued by us. The people behind those important documents, be it driving licence or the national ID, we have substantial share globally. When we talk about other perspective like corporate enterprises, our presence is even stronger. A lot of international airport ID cards are issued by our system.
Enterprises like Microsoft, Google or any other company, all those IT companies have working relationships with us. Healthcare – another important area for us; allocations to issue student ID, staff ID or other similar things are few areas where we have a very good presence. Last year, we started venturing into Banking as well. We started issuing various banking cards such as Credit Card, Debit card and many others. You can see our success in this area as well. In U.S.,
In an exclusive interview with siliconindia, Wei Jin Lee, Regional Director, Secure Issuance - Asia Pacific, HID Global, shares his insights about the current secure identity solutions industry in India, the emerging trends, and technology innovations.
My role includes business development, involving in operations and business partnerships. Personally, I have been in this industry for 20 years. I took over APAC role in 2014. I still remember, in the first quarter of 2014 I came to India, it was the first country that I visited after taking over the APAC role. Prior to this, I was responsible for South-East Asia role. So India was one of my first destination and we visited 6 cities within 5 days. Now, India has become my regular place of visit. Before this trip, I renewed my passport & India VISA as well. During that, I was astonished to see that I had so many Indian VISA stamps. Back then, every 3 months you need to apply VISA; and this year, I’m enjoying multiple entries Visa. So India is now one of key focus.
At HID, we focus on identity solutions. Our mission is to empower the trusted identity for global businesses and their people. All solutions that we provide are around trusted identity. We want to ensure security for all the happenings online and people to move anywhere safely. Everything can be identified accurately and determine who you are.
Within HID, there are several business units. The entire company goes by business unit structure, because the thought focus is important. Every business unit focuses on what they are doing. At the same time, higher management concentrates on how to provide proper integrated solutions among these business units. From our side, our business unit is called secure issuance. What this business unit does is provide secure identity card solutions. When you talk about issue identity card, it’s not only personalization. It’s how to securely issue trusted identity documents.
One of our key products is ID Card Printer. Coming to the ecosystem, ID card printer is the most important component. When we talk about ID card printer, we are clear worldwide leader in this aspect. Our product spectrum covers entry level to professional industry level. Nobody in this world has more offering than us in this industry. I was in our country last week and discussing about the comparison in this industry; so we found that among all our competitors we were the leaders. Why I say we are clear leader is because we are successful and are the most experienced. US Green Card is using our solutions from 20 years. This is definitely a testimony for us. It is one of the most challenging identity card and everyone hope to hold a US Green Card. There are smart people who try to counterfeit. But if somebody can hold a project for 20 years, that is really a testimony for us. They just renewed their contract with HID. Other than in US, we have a huge success in Latin America. There we have many driving licence projects. US, Latin America, Europe and Middle-East – any major project from these regions will no doubt come to HID. In APAC, from Japan, Korea, China, Australia, to South-East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia; South Asian countries like Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India; within these regions quite many number of important projects are for well recognised ID cards issued by us. The people behind those important documents, be it driving licence or the national ID, we have substantial share globally. When we talk about other perspective like corporate enterprises, our presence is even stronger. A lot of international airport ID cards are issued by our system.
Enterprises like Microsoft, Google or any other company, all those IT companies have working relationships with us. Healthcare – another important area for us; allocations to issue student ID, staff ID or other similar things are few areas where we have a very good presence. Last year, we started venturing into Banking as well. We started issuing various banking cards such as Credit Card, Debit card and many others. You can see our success in this area as well. In U.S.,
we heavily involve in instant issue of Banking Cards. In some countries in South-East Asia as well, we are getting more and more market share. Our system helps them issue the cards more efficiently, faster and help them improve the customer experience. The industries we cover include Government, education, banking, enterprises, and many others.HID Operations in India
HID is incorporated in India. We have different GPUs within HID. Prior to forming the GBU structure,, HID was under one umbrella. We have our success control business also incorporated in India. We work out of our Bangalore office, which is also out India headquarter. We have separate sales, marketing, and finance team working for that GBU in India. We have Secure Issue business group also with a separate sales structure and sales organisation in India. We are a team of three people in the Secure Issue business group. In the Access Control business, we have a team of almost 40 people. Besides that, we are also are proud of other investments in India. We also have recent acquisitions – companies like Quantum Secure have been acquired by HID and they have operations already in India. They have also been integrated in India. We have a full-fledged R&D centre in Chennai which was started in 2014, and now have over 200 people working there. In terms of numbers, HID has close to 300-400 people in India, with investments in R&D, marketing, nosiness development, and many other areas.
Secure Identity Solutions Market in India
Though a strategic perspective, India is a very important market for secure identity solutions, particularly in Law enforcement agencies and Government initiatives. The Government is planning a lot of initiatives to give benefits to the poor sections of the society by issuing secure identity such as Health cards, Aadhar cards, or Driving Licences which are not traditionally paper-based anymore; they rely on smart cards rather than on any paper document. These kinds of initiatives have really helped HID to build a very robust business in India. We work with a lot of Government agencies on the Law enforcement agencies, wherein the instances of people using fake ID cards have been mitigated a lot we have seen LIVE examples wherein the solutions that we have provided to these Government agencies have helped them secure the identities of their people. That is one area in which we work closely with the Government in India.
When it comes to ID cards, it involves or plastic material. We all know that plastic is very harmful to the environment. Compared to other ID card printing vendors, our products are very eco-friendly and generate 50 percent less waste. Companies should consume less electricity and generate less waste, while simultaneously maintaining the quality of the ID cards.
Latest Technologies & Trends in the Secure Identity Solutions Industry
Issuing highly secure identity card is never easy. Identity cards are becoming more important with each passing day, where they can be used for online transactions, healthcare, banking, and many other purposes. For this, you need to issue a very secure ID cards which are very difficult to counterfeit and challenging for any hacker to attack.
Indian Market vs. The Market Abroad
Every market has its own characteristics. In India, because of the high volume of ID cards, cost becomes a very important factor. Companies who can issue ID cards at affordable rates, while not compromising on quality and security will be winners in this market.
Security Challenges in the Secure Identity Solutions Industry
Most ID cards today can be easily counterfeited. We at HID are always in the process of enhancing the security of our solutions. We invest heavily in R&D to come-out with better products with more challenging features for anyone attack. We have certain printers specially designed for India. Visual security is a very important aspect of any ID card. More customers particularly in the Government side are moving towards implementing visual security on their ID cards for their employees, citizens and others. Even though you have built an electronic security when you issue a smart card, when a person’s ID card is being scanned at the entrance of the building, the first thing that comes to the mind of the person checking the ID cards is if it’s a genuine or a fake card. We are a country which does not have electronic equipment that can verify ID cards at every place. So the visual security becomes very important at that point of time. We have solutions which are very difficult to fake or counterfeit. Even if they do use counterfeits, it is very easy to identify them.
