Nexus, a leading international provider of security solutions and services, is expanding the federated identity card management system of the universities of Karlsruhe in cooperation with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). By implementing the Nexus PRIME as a central management platform, the ID card federation will offer higher user convenience to students and staff as well as guests and partners and will be open for future innovation.
Managed by KIT, the Karlsruhe ID card federation enables students and staff of the participating universities to use their multifunctional smart cards across institutions, for example for access, library usage or payment in cafeterias and at copiers. All ID cards are created and encoded independent of manufacturer and can be used for all subsystems of the federated institutions.
By upgrading the current card management system Nexus ProACT to Nexus PRIME, the range of available self-services in particular is planned to be expanded. Using the process language BPMN 2.0, workflows for creating various ID card types can be customized easily and efficiently. Another key aspect is the system’s future development. Technological innovations need to be implemented in the central platform only once to be utilized throughout the entire federation. Moreover, Nexus PRIME allows administrators to create and manage identities and entitlements on a wide range of media, such as smart cards, mobile phones and tokens.
Nexus and KIT: A Proven Partnership
Since 2009, KIT has been using Nexus ProACT for creating and managing the “KITCard” for students and staff. Since then, the system has gradually been expanded to allow for a federated usage of multifunctional smart cards of additional instutitions in Karlsruhe.
Today, KIT, the KIT library, the Cooperative State University Baden-Württemberg Karlsruhe, the University of Education Karlsruhe, the University of Applied Sciences Karlsruhe and the University of Music Karlsruhe are integrated into the system as independent clients. In addition, the card management system of the Baden State Library is associated with the KIT system. The electronic wallet included in all ID cards is managed by the Studierendenwerk Karlsruhe. Approximately 80,000 cards issued by the various partners are active within the card federation.
“For us, Nexus is the obvious partner for the continued development of our card management system,” says Wilhelm Sievers, project manager at KIT. “Together, we will leverage our experience and know-how from our long-standing cooperation to offer the students and staff of Karlsruhe’s universities a higher user convenience and a broader service offering.”
“We are looking forward to developing a future-proof card management system together with KIT,” says Jürgen König, Chief Marketing Officer, Nexus. “For example, mobile devices with near-field communication (NFC) technology will play an increasingly important role as identifying credentials. At the same time, methods such as two-factor authentification are needed to ensure a consistently high security level. Nexus PRIME fulfils both the technical and organizational requirements for these developments.”