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In 2015, they needed to address that their entire fleet of employees and contractors — more than 350,000 individuals — were using outdated, vulnerable access card technology. JPMC knew what they had to do. They needed top of the market encrypted ID cards, with proprietary keys that freed them from being bound to any individual manufacturer.
Enter K&A Industries, long-time trusted partner, with a promise: We’ll outfit you with a secure access control technology that will grow with you into the future, and we will not rest until we have that perfect solution for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Paired with a deep understanding of card technology and the precision detail that goes into each card, it was that refusal to simply sell a product that sealed the deal and led to what we at K&A consider our most impressive challenge yet. The months that followed saw intense planning sessions with JPMC’s security teams that ultimately led to a formidable system, “future-proofed” and ready to adapt to any upcoming access control applications. Today, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is still one of K&A’s closest partners and, to date, has issued over two million encrypted ID cards.
Built on the foundations of more than 1,200 institutions, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is well-known for its age and size, philanthropic initiatives, transforming economies, and innovations in finance. When 2014 saw an unprecedented slew of data breaches and security hacks that haunted the card industry, JPMC was able to assure their customers that their sensitive data was safe. These widespread attacks were a test of their security as well as a call to rally, and since then, their security response has been remarkable. As one of the strongest financial services firms in the world, JPMorgan Chase & Co. partnered with K&A to safeguard the firm (and more importantly, its clients) against threats from an outdated access control system.
They needed secure IDs, but as a global financial leader, JPMorgan Chase & Co. was also looking for a working solution that would follow them into the future. Competing firms were pushing some solid encrypted card technologies, but they all fell short in a few critical areas.
Ultimately, JPMorgan Chase & Co. needed encrypted ID cards with proprietary keys than they owned. They needed the ability to control the future direction of their card technology. They needed to be able to expand their applications for future access control systems. And they did not want to be pigeonholed into any one manufacturer or be locked out of viewing their own encrypted keys. They needed a partner they could trust with a deep understanding of card technology to help them choose the right technology path for their needs. They needed a trusted ID architect for a comprehensive approach to secure IDs.
In business since 1991, K&A is a long-standing expert in the identity management market. We are good at what we do, but more importantly, we care deeply about quality of service and strive to provide the best possible solution tailored to each client’s needs. But J.P. Morgan Chase had more than just our elevator pitch; they had trust. K&A had an established relationship with Morgan Guaranty since the late 1990s and their trusted relationship with K&A Industries continued beyond company mergers of JPMC today.
By 2015, when JPMC needed to move towards secure IDs, K&A was already a vetted and trusted source. Competing vendors were trying to push iClass Seos® — an impressive technology, to be sure — but JPMC’s security teams liked what they heard from K&A’s counterarguments.
DESFire, an open-source, software-based security technology, checked all the boxes. It was interoperable, scalable, and would support mobile schemes, biometrics, and multiple applications, including additions the system will not see for years. It was the ideal platform for the solution developers at K&A and JPMC to build. That shared vision, along with over a decade of trust built on a working relationship, made K&A the choice provider for the upcoming challenge of migrating a multinational corporation’s employee access control system.
K&A is a solutions provider, not a sales company. We spent focused time with JPMC Cyber Security and JPMC Global Security whiteboarding and future-proofing their secure ID system to allow for future growth and expansion. Together, we included capabilities like access control for turnstiles, secure document printing, smart lockers, and planned around future biometric applications such as fingerprint access, palm geometrics, and facial recognition. A quick sale might have fulfilled a present need, but ultimately, it would have not solved the problem.
Instead, we reached for a proper, scalable technology solution by asking how we solve the problem, discover the deficit, plan for the future, and provide the best possible solution for JPMC. K&A and JPMC’s security teams agreed on the future of the ID access control system and the platform that would get it there, but K&A’s role would not end with selecting a card technology. Secure key encryptions and a challenging migration project were still in order. JPMorgan Chase & Co. needed to trust that we had it handled and would work with them to outfit their entire credential system, end-to-end.
We designed the 32-bit password encryption keys and passed complete ownership over to JPMorgan Chase & Co. — a practice that is unheard of in the industry. K&A values the authorship of our clients; we want to help them succeed and remain in control.
Today, we at K&A are proud to call ourselves the secure credential custodians to JPMorgan Chase & Co. They own the encrypted keys; we are the gatekeepers to their security. We provide new encryptions daily to their ever-growing enterprise; they have secure ID cards that cannot be compromised. For JPMC, being vulnerable is not an option.
And we at K&A stand by our slogan — “We do ID right.”
Expertly distributed across
JPMC’s global enterprise to date
Cloning vulnerability was eliminated immediately, and JPMC reaps the benefits of secure physical access in their working environments across 350,000 employees and contractors. To date, K&A has provided JPMorgan Chase & Co. with over a million secure IDs and has installed and maintained the hardware for 31 card production offices across 17 countries in the JPMC enterprise.
“We do ID right.” Our tagline says it all – we know what we are doing and are good at what we do.
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KA Industries, Inc.
155 Pierce Street, Unit 7
Somerset, NJ 08873
Toll-Free (800) 688-9202
Phone: (908) 226-7000
Fax: (908) 226-7007
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