Ranjit Nambiar
Director – Sales (IAM) South Asia, HID Global
“We have the broadest multi-factor authentication options, including mobile One-Time Password (OTP) Soft Tokens, transparent authentication, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates,” says Ranjit Nambiar. In Conversation with Ankush Kumar.
Please tell us about your product portfolio for the Indian market?
HID Global is a leader in secure identity solutions. We have largely three business segments through which we cater to the market in India. One key area is the physical access control business where we have very significant solutions. We also have identity assurance business. In case of identity assurance, the same identity card, which is used for door access, can also be used for accessing the IT network. The third area is of secure issuance, which is mainly about visual security. So if you look at the three business segments, which are quite diverse, you may end up asking what is HID doing in such discrete segments. But for us there is a very strong common denominator here and that is the Identity. So basically we are into the business of securing the identity.
You are also working with various leading nationalised banks in the country. Tell us about the work which you are doing with the banks in India.
The physical access control present in solutions with most of the banks are from HID. Our clients include some of the major banks like SBI, ICICI, AXIS Bank, etc. Other banks are also in process of deploying our solutions. The HID Identity Assurance portfolio makes it easy for financial institutions to deploy the layered security solution that best meets their diverse needs and complies with heightened regulatory requirements. By deploying an integrated multi-layered authentication and real-time threat detection platform our clients can address man-in-the-middle (MITM) and man-in-the-browser (MITB) and other threats. Now it has been mandated by RBI that banking transaction have to be two factor or multi-layer security. We have solutions for OTP (One time password) generation. OTP can be a hard token, it can be a soft token or it can be a mobile token. We have the broadest multi-factor authentication options, including mobile One-Time Password (OTP) Soft Tokens, transparent authentication, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates, along with proactive fraud detection and tamperevident audit reporting, for internal audit, compliance managers and fraud prevention departments to satisfy regulatory compliance and customer data protection requirements.
How do you see the e-Governance sector in India? Do you see any business opportunities in this space?
In the Indian market, e-Governance is the largest segment today with respect to the secure printing or secure issuance. We have now developed a very strong focus on e-Governance. We are getting into significant partnership and alliances. There are lot of areas where we can contribute. The solutions that we are developing for government departments include physical and logical access control, including strong authentication and credential management; card printing and personalisation; highly secure government ID; and identification technologies used in animal ID and industry and logistics applications.
What kind of solutions are you offering to PSUs in India?
Predominantly, physical access control and secure issuance, we also provide systems for printing of the cards as the employ base is substantial. For instance, ONGC has more than 85000 employees. Other PSUs also have a large work force. Secure issuance has the advantage of in-house printing. In the past people used to get the printing done externally through the printing bureaus, but as security awareness is growing, they don’t want it to be done externally.
What kind of role can HID play in the area of financial inclusion in India?
For us, financial inclusion is largely a part of the e-Governance strategy. So we are participating with many partners who are involved in roviding services in the financial inclusion area.
