20% - Assa Abloy

“In today’s turbulent times,
businesses must do their
utmost to ensure employee
safety and data security,”
explains John Bennett, Vice
President of the System
Security Group at Merrill
Lynch.
Efficient security for
global operations
Merrill Lynch, one of the world’s leading finance companies,
needed to renew its access control system. With
offices worldwide, the company has 50,000 employees
and 20,000 regular visitors. There were many out-of-date
access cards in circulation, so Merrill Lynch turned to
HID Group for a tailor-made access control solution.
Future-proof solution
The decision to assign new credentials to its users, however,
spawned a larger project within Merrill Lynch. The
goal would be to work towards a centralized access control
system that could link to the company’s IT infrastructure
so that users could use a single card for all their access
needs, whether to buildings or computers.
This of course necessitated a solution that:
• was multi-technology to assist in the migration to
smart cards;
• could be used anywhere in Asia, the USA or Europe;
• was operational around the clock;
• would be capable of future expansion into network
log-on, biometrics and other smart-card applications;
• was suitable for all user groups.
HID Group proposed a new system that would deliver multiple
layers of protection by standardizing procedures for
issuing new and updating existing employee identity cards.
Global Technologies Division
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Key components of the successful implementation were
HID iCLASS ® smart card technology and the advantages of
HID Group’s Corporate 1000 program, which assigns customers
a product with a unique format, giving them full
control over its use, rather than using open domain formats.
As Merrill Lynch already had Corporate 1000 national
formats, it was a matter of merging them into a single format,
enabling users to access any Merrill Lynch facility, anywhere
in the world, with the same card.
Personal service
The next step was to generate and issue new user credentials,
valid across nine locations, in three different categories
depending on each user’s access rights. HID Group’s
Card Personalization Service had the capacity, ability and
experience to handle Merrill Lynch’s extensive requirements.
Paul Martin, Vice President, System Security Group at
Merrill Lynch, says the sheer volume of the project made it
impossible to achieve in house. “We felt confident that HID
was geared up to do the job. And it was. HID Group quickly
delivered secure, branded cards with visual security features
and a design that clearly shows the user’s access
rights.”