HID Global’s Smart Employee ID provides secure access control at Nissan Europe

Nissan Europe facilitates the design, engineering, manufacture and sale of Nissan cars from locations across 34 European countries. The company’s headquarters are in Trappes, Paris and employs over 12,500 staff. 

Search for a solution

In 2001, Nissan Japan implemented a physical access solution which allowed its employees to securely access its sites using a smart card. Nissan Europe examined this model and decided to take it one step further by introducing a combined logical and physical access solution to improve security across the organisation and produce a single Nissan employee ID card. 

Nissan Europe needed a solution that allowed employees to securely access and exchange sensitive information, as well as secure facility access for its 34 European locations. 

Up to 30 percent of employees need secure remote access to the Nissan Europe IT network. These mobile workers insisted on authenticating the same way whether they connect to the network locally or remotely. Nissan Europe also wanted to implement a solution that would easily enable future applications and credentials via a single dual-chip smart card. 

Card middleware solutions

Nissan Europe evaluated several card management software and card middleware solutions. Nissan selected HID Global’s Smart Employee ID because it was the only field-proven solution that could scale to 100,000 users. It would also securely update smart cards post-issuance to add applications or credentials as Nissan’s needs evolved. 

The success of HID Global in a project with Nissan in Japan gave Nissan Europe confidence to deploy HID Global’s solution. 

Two-month pilot project

Following a successful proof of concept conducted, Nissan Europe worked closely with HID Global’s team on a two-month pilot project. Initially the team tested the technology in one Nissan Europe site with 30 users; subsequently the pilot extended for another month across additional sites incorporating 300 users. During the pilot phase, six Nissan administrators of HID Global’s ActivID® Card Management System (CMS) were fully trained, five databases were replicated and both operator roles and card profiles were implemented. 

The team received positive feedback from the pilot and decided to start the full- scale implementation of the project. Nissan Europe implemented the ActivID CMS to manage the issuance and administration of the Nissan ID cards and HID Global’s 4TRESS™ AAA Server for Remote Access to enable strong authentication for remote network access. 

The team implemented two ActivID CMS servers for Northern and Southern Europe. A new set of card profiles were designed according to Nissan’s requirements, taking into account both the existing cards in Japan and future PKI needs. Customised operator roles were also created to enable operation by local helpdesk and security teams. 

Physical and logical access

In just three months over 5,500 employees could use their Nissan ID cards everyday for both physical and logical access. HID Global was involved in the design and implementation phases of the project and worked closely with the Nissan Europe team to ensure the solution went live as planned.   

Nissan Europe was impressed with the smooth integration of HID Global’s technology, and the ease of management of card self-service issuance, post-issuance and One-Time Password authentication to a VPN.   

Currently, over 7,000 users across 34 European locations are using a smart employee ID card. Each site was responsible for its own deployment, co-ordinated by one single European project manager. Users initialised the cards themselves. The project was heavily supported and praised by the management team.   

Communicating and promoting the use of the Nissan ID card to all end-users was vital to the success of the project. The team held internal workshops for all local helpdesk agents, pilot users, executive management and all Nissan Europe ID card users. Marketing collateral was also created and displayed in all offices to remind users that they would be unable to log-on to the network or enter the building without their Nissan ID card.