Oak Ridge National Labs deploys Gemalto’s PIV solution
04 April, 2014
category: Corporate, Government, Smart Cards
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a technology research facility for the U.S. Department of Energy, is rolling out a new identification infrastructure using PIV smart cards for physical and logical access.
Mitigating the security risk and complexity associated with usernames and passwords, lab employees insert their Protiva IDPrime PIV card into a PC embedded or connected card reader to gain access to controlled information systems, to digitally sign documents and encrypt emails, says Thomas Flynn, vice president for Identity and Access at Gemalto North America.
For physical access, employees simply submit their PIV card for secure entry to restricted areas. The card has both a contactless 14443 chip and a 125-kilohertz prox chip for legacy systems.
Gemalto is seeing enterprises that are associated with confidential government research and development and critical infrastructure, such as Oak Ridge, shore up security with PIV solutions, Flynn says. Although FIPS 201 and PIV aren’t mandated for these organizations, the work they are doing in the federal space is necessitating it. Utility companies also are starting to deploy FIPS 201systems for physical and logical access.
Gemalto collaborated with Charismathics on the logical access side for the deployment and Quantum Secure on the physical side. This all-in-one offer gives Oak Ridge a layered protection that can reduce potential security breaches while safeguarding employees’ identities.
Gemalto has delivered more than 15 million PIV cards to different government agencies.