Giesecke & Devrient Corporate Profile

Creating Confidence

The Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) Group is a leading global technology provider with its headquarters in Munich, Germany, and 49 subsidiaries, joint ventures, and associated companies across every continent.

At the end of 2008, G&D had a headcount of around 10,000. The Group generated total sales of around 1.7 billion euros in the 2008 fiscal year, around 85 percent of which stemmed from outside Germany. G&D was founded by Hermann Giesecke and Alphonse Devrient in Leipzig in 1852. Today, G&D is a family-owned company with its roots in Germany and operations all over the world.

Security, competence, and trust are the watchwords of the Group. Its customer-centric products, systems, and services make G&D a reliable partner for governments, central banks, public authorities, and other companies. G&D offers innovative products, services, and solutions for banknote production and processing (Banknote business unit), as well as smart cards and complex system solutions for protecting electronic transactions and data, particularly in the fields of telecommunications and electronic payment (Cards and Services business unit). It also provides high-security travel documents, healthcare cards, and ID cards that both serve as a means of traditional identification and authenticate and secure e-government services and online business transactions (Government Solutions business unit). The New Business division, founded in 2006, stimulates additional growth beyond these three established business units by developing solutions for new markets and technologies.

New Business Division at Giesecke & Devrient
The New Business division was established with the aim of systematically opening up new business areas and enhancing existing products and services. The main focus here is on developing innovative technologies to safeguard digital content in IT networks and mobile devices. In these times of closely networked communication, users require convenient mobile access to a wide variety of services. However, acceptance of these services – such as online banking – is heavily dependent on their security.

Telephone companies, network operators, Internet businesses, banks, retailers, transport and mobility organizations are all seeking solutions that enable them to offer their customers applications with an element of financial value, backed by stringent security.

Digital identities must function reliably to ensure that bank transactions are not hacked into, industrial spies cannot access company networks, and freeloaders cannot use services such as pay TV. G&D has developed a key technology for this purpose: the first Mobile Security Card. The underlying principle is that users can connect to all services requiring a digital identity, at home, on the move, and via USB token. A contactless interface can also be incorporated into the card to enable electronic access control for buildings, e-ticketing, and e-ID cards for corporate and other requirements.

The Mobile Security Card incorporates a cryptocontroller, which provides security for cell phones, smartphones, notebooks and other mobile terminal devices without needing a smart card reader. Development and distribution of the Mobile Security Card is being handled by Giesecke & Devrient Secure Flash Solutions (G&D SFS), a joint venture of G&D and Phison Electronics Corp.

Contactless payment is another deployment scenario. Secure devices coupled with secure services offer massive business opportunities that we are systematically targeting. One example is the StarSign® USB token, which can be used without driver software to launch applications directly. Computer users can identify themselves reliably, encrypt their data independently of the transmission process, and sign documents.

In early 2009, G&D commenced large-scale production of a smart card featuring an integrated display for one-time passwords (OTP). The OTP function can readily be combined with EMV solutions from the G&D card portfolio for payments.

The new Trusted Base security scheme with MobiCore® is one way to securely manage applications on mobile phones. It can reliably handle banking services, web payments, and all the underlying transactions. Information can be entered on mobile devices for banks and credit card organizations using a secure keyboard and display.

Another key issue for the New Business Division is brand protection. This mainly focuses on reliably identifying products and improving anti-counterfeiting security. To this end, SAP, Nokia, and G&D founded a joint venture, Original1 GmbH. Original1 delivers unique product authentication and anti-counterfeiting services across the globe.