Entrust Datacard provides trusted identities for secure transactions in today's digital world.

For far too long, the world of payments remained relatively unchanged with a reliance on traditional bricks and mortar channels, an enduring base of legacy clearing services and standards, and a slow moving migration from traditional payment methods like checks and cash to electronic transactions.

Entrust Datacard was established 50 years ago to answer a problem in the payment industry: “how do you personalize a payment card or credential fast enough to meet the demand of the marketplace?” At that time payment cards were fairly new and there was a need for high-speed personalization. The founders of Entrust Datacard recognized this market problem.

Today, the identity and payments industries have rapidly evolved to become far more digital. There is still a need for physical credentials like a payment card, passport or national ID, but the need for digital identity is also quickly increasing.

An individual’s identity is like a computer network, a system connecting to other systems. The more connected we become the greater the need for secure identities at the people, systems and things level.

In 2014, the company (Datacard at the time), made a strategic acquisition of Entrust and rebranded the company to Entrust Datacard with the understanding that the company would continue to develop trusted identities. And those identities would be part of enabling secure transactions — which is now company’s  tagline: ‘Trusted Identities and Secure Transactions.’

As a combined company, Entrust Datacard was able to introduce to the government market a combined solution that allowed for the secure issuance of a physical passport with a chip containing the citizen’s digital identity. Encoded on to this chip is all of the same information as the physical passport, plus background information used by the international community to validate an identity.

This combined solution provides citizens with an identity that’s unique to them as an individual that allows them to move more freely across borders. Entrust Datacard also offers authentication, connected systems and secure gateways for the Internet of Things.

According to the firm, its five success factors are:

People- Far and above anything else the company believes in its people and provide them with the necessary bandwidth to accomplish what they want to do as well as empower them to achieve their professional aspirations.

Ownership- As a privately-held company, it has an owner that believes in the company and its long-term development, which means they are willing to reinvest profits back into developing future offers.

Global reach- Serving over 150 countries across 34 offices worldwide provides an incredible opportunity to break into many different markets.

Diversity- There is diversity in both the customers and markets it serves, as well as its product portfolio.

The firm is contributing to the global IT platform and society at large by proactively participating in variety of standard bodies including the Certificate Authority (CA) Browser Forum. Not only that, the company is also active in the Cloud Security Alliance, Industrial Internet Consortium, Document Security Alliance, VMWare Mobile Security Alliance, Secure Technology Alliance, PCI Security Standards Council and FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance to name a few.

Meet the pre-eminent persona

Anudeep Parhar joined Entrust Datacard in 2016 to lead the company’s rapid expansion to the cloud for all facets of the business. His vision and leadership is vital to transforming the company’s technology operations for colleagues and customers and increasing the digital security posture. Mr. Parhar joined the company from Bloom Health where he served as chief technology officer. He previously held executive level IT and Technology roles at Digital River, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and Thomson Reuters West. He has a master’s in computer science from the University of Minnesota, Moorhead and a Bachelor’s in computer science and engineering from Gulbarga University, India.

Words from the CIO

“I see the company continuing to grow and continuing to provide more security and interconnected services to companies. More Security-as-a-Service will be consumed, whether it be through cloud services, or non-traditional on-premise infrastructures. We’re going to continue to invest in that direction to provide companies with the security they require and make sure they can consume it the way they want to.”

“Our solutions range from the physical world of financial cards, passports and ID cards to the digital realm of authentication, certificates and secure communications.”

“We specialize in Secure ID Solutions, Card personalization systems, Passport Systems & Security, Card Delivery and Fulfillment Systems, PKI, SSL/TLS, Multifactor Authentication, Physical/Logical Access, Digital Certificates and Signatures, Identity-Based Security, IoT, IIoT, Financial Instant Issuance, Access Control, Bureau Solutions, and Trusted Identities.”