In The Boardroom With...

Steven Humphreys
Chief Executive Officer
Identiv

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Steve. One will read at Identiv.com, that “ Identiv’s mission is to secure access to the connected physical world: from perimeter to desktop access, and from the world of physical things to the Internet of Everything.“ Seems to us that significant traction has been achieved with one (1) billion transponders deployed, 5,000 customers, $500 million of equipment in the field, 400 hundred partners.   Impressive metrics, indeed!   Care to elaborate?

Steve Humphreys: Absolutely… and thanks so much for inviting me to tell Identiv’s story. I think we’re all familiar with the convenience of the digital world — the world where Netflix knows what you want to watch next and Amazon knows what you're going to buy next. Identiv’s vision is to bring the benefits of the digital world to the physical world. We have a variety of products and go-to-market strategies that are putting us in a leading position to deliver those benefits. We see a major market opportunity as the physical world goes online, and we want to be the leading platform to get there. That's a big statement to make for a small company, but as you pointed out with those metrics, we’re in a great position to do just that.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Can we drill down a bit into market drivers and Identiv success stories? We understand that the Federal Government is a major customer which accounts for about 25% of revenues. Can you give us some color about the solutions Identiv provides to those FBI and IRS field offices?

Steve Humphreys: Yes, the U.S. federal government overall is one of our biggest customers. You’ll find Identiv physical access, smart card reader, and credential technology in many government agencies. For example, we are providing the physical access control in many of the IRS field offices. These offices are very security-oriented, but also very convenience-oriented. From issuing to revoking access rights — we provide the platform to ensure that only the right people are getting in at the right time.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: What about other parts of Identiv’s business with the US Government such as the Veterans Administrations, NASA, DoD, DoJ, DoHS?

Steve Humphreys: You’ll find Identiv in about a third of the U.S. embassies worldwide, Veterans Administration hospitals, NASA, DoD, DoJ, DoHS — you name it, we're in it. We’re also at the border. We recently entered into a partnership with Corvus Integration and our uTrust 4501 F Dual Interface Smart Card Reader Board is integrating with the Corvus Tetrad biometric solution. The combined biometric and smart card solution is used to enhance security for border patrol.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are foreign governments in the Identiv revenue mix as well?

Steve Humphreys: Obviously the U.S. is our home market, and that is an important aspect in dealing with governments. But yes, we do also have additional government customers in our revenue mix, from Europe to Asia.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Let’s turn to enterprise accounts for a moment. We read with great interest the Identiv Case Studies here. Please give us an overview of Identiv’s niche in the Education, Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, and other enterprise markets.

Steve Humphreys: Education is a big market for us. We provide campus-wide access control solutions that monitor and control entry points at all buildings, a complete ID badging module, instant lock-down or lock-up features, and integration with student, employee, and predator databases.

For financial services, and several other verticals, like retail and hospitality, we’re really excited about our acquisition of 3VR. 3VR’s video intelligence solutions offer a single platform for real-time security and consumer insights, enabling organizations to protect employees, customers, and assets as well as improve store operations and shopping experiences. 3VR’s open, pluggable platform leverages existing customer infrastructure and allows them to expand their systems’ capabilities seamlessly.

Additionally, when a theft or other undesirable event happens, 3VR’s system is the industry’s best for event investigation, evidence consolidation and case management.

We’re able to provide the healthcare industry with secure access to ER, pharmacy, radiology, maternity, and parking areas. Our solutions integrate with video, infant tags, patient bracelets, and wandering patient systems. We can help identify visitors, badge and ID staff, track and verify temperature-sensitive tools, and so much more. Recently, for its one-time CADence patient booklets, AUM Cardiovascular chose Identiv’s intelligent inlays to protect privacy by de-identifying patient information stored and read in the one-time booklets. The booklets are part of CADence, a non-invasive handheld acoustic and ECG device that helps physicians detect physiological and pathological heart murmurs.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com:  What is your perspective, Steve, regarding the unique value proposition that Identiv delivers to your customers through the entire lifecycle of their enterprise IT and security programs?

Steve Humphreys: Security and analytics systems are complex, and yet must be integrated with other systems to deliver their benefits to our customers. Our Identiv Global Services team provides a superior experience with 24/7 assistance from our highly experienced support and system engineers, “find one, fix many” early access to patches, premier insight into product enhancements, and even a direct line to Identiv Product Management and Engineering. We’re providing comprehensive, end-to-end services to support our customers, including mobile, automation, cloud, asset management, monitoring, and SP 800-171. We have an integration team that will write the drivers for the specific infrastructure that a customer has — we’re here to delight our customers every step of the way.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Congratulations on the acquisition of 3VR, which “will strengthen the Company’s position in the premises security market.“ How is the integration proceeding thus far?

Steve Humphreys: It’s proceeding very well, driven by an underlying reality that led us to 3VR:  There's a massive data overload today. There are about half a billion digital cameras out there and maybe 12 billion hours a day of digital video being generated. Everyone on the planet could be watching a couple hours of digital video everyday and we still wouldn't be able to cover it all. So, that information is useless from a security perspective. No one is watching all of that footage. Same thing holds true for doors — there are a billion and a half electronic doors in the world. If they are used about 100 times each day this equates to about 150 billion access events which can't possibly be tracked. That is where our acquisition of 3VR comes into the picture. We’re adding an analytics platform to video surveillance to eliminate the impossible need to watch those events. The machine will watch them, and when there is an event that seems to be meaningful, Identiv can now show it to you. The integration is moving forward in really meaningful ways. 3VR Video Intelligence is a single platform for real-time security and consumer insights that allows organizations to protect their employees, customers, and assets, as well as enhance store operations and shopping experiences. 3VR Video Intelligence with Velocity Software is a complete physical access solution providing event-driven video viewing and integrated alarm management by correlating live and recorded video with access control events. 3VR Video Analytics with Location Intelligence for Actionable Insights provides insight into visitor behavior based on mobile device (MAC ID) analytics with video for more data intelligence.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Very interesting Steve ….the iAuthenticate Identiv Reader for Apple iPhone and iPad:

Jim Myers, OtterBox Vice President of Commercial Sales, said, “The collaboration between Identiv and OtterBox has brought ruggedized, trusted protection for devices together with strong user authentication and security of data, confidential information, and IP. iAuthenticate 2.0 OtterBox enables the secure access of corporate resources,

including email, files, and data, protecting everyone from individual users to government agencies.”  Want to weigh in, Steve?

Steve Humphreys: We’re really excited about Identiv’s iAuthenticate™ 2.0 OtterBox®, an iOS smart card reader designed for OtterBox® uniVERSE, Apple® iPhone®, and iPad. Believe it or not, this will be the first time that DoD service people will be allowed to access their content — email included — through their mobile devices in a convenient form factor. With iAuthenticate 2.0, a user takes their government ID badge and inserts into the reader, which connects via the lighting port on the device. It’s completely secure. In fact, none of the content actually goes onto the device, it’s simply displayed, yet stays on the server, and even then, comes across encrypted. We’ve already shipped several thousand units. Of course, this isn’t just a product for the U.S. government, it will benefit any organization where we see the increase of BYOD.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Any other new solutions you want to talk about?

Steve Humphreys: Definitely, we have been very busy this year releasing new products! We just released our FICAM-ready TS ScramblePad SC reader at ISC West in April. The reader extends our popular ScramblePad family with a contact smart card reader for FICAM two-factor authentication for high-security zones. The ScramblePad design is specified in many of the world’s most secure locations due to its high-security scramble feature that randomly orders the digits each time the “START” button is pressed or a card requiring a PIN is presented. The random scrambling prevents the acquisition of a user code via pattern recognition and also prevents keypad wear that leaves a tell-tale impression of the numbers used in a valid PIN. The addition of the contact smart card reader enables two-factor authentication using the PIV Authentication Key (PAK) and the card PIN.

We also recently introduced our Velocity Web Services Client which allows users to manage people and credentials, alarm and event monitoring, report logged data, command set execution and hardware control — all from the convenience of their web browser, whether it is from their mobile device, tablet or laptop.

We’ve also launched several additional integrations with our Hirsch Velocity platform, such as our recent integration with Telaeris XPressEntry handheld mobile authentication terminals and tracking software, which allows security operators to enhance the security and safety of facilities managed by Velocity, allowing users to setup virtual doors as needed and on the fly, validate the credentials of cardholders and establish muster stations anywhere in the facility or campus, optimizing rescue resources in emergency conditions.

Another exciting integration is with Sadevio’s Visitor Management System, which we also demonstrated at ISC West in April. Customers experience a new generation of the visitor management system that centralizes all important information, enhances security, and is easily accessible worldwide on any device with a modern web browser. This also integrates with our Hirsch Velocity platform.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: The list of Identiv technology partners speaks volumes about your positioning in this fast-growing global market that touches everyone…everywhere.

Want to give us a brief overview of the teaming arrangements with American Dynamics, Cisco and Verint?

Steve Humphreys: Without getting too technical, American Dynamics has two products, Intellex 5.00.74 DVR and Video Edge NVR 4.8.1.558, that integrate with Hirsch Velocity. There’s also Cisco’s Video Surveillance Manager 7.8 and Vernit’s Nextiva. With Velocity, partners are able to manage feature access and usage via role permissions and device permissions, trigger recordings on multiple cameras, include an optional preset camera action, display live video, view video associated with alarms, generate reports about videos, and so much more.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: With a modest market cap of only $62 million, Identiv (NASDAQ: INVE), seems to be an undiscovered micro-cap. So, may we ask you, Steve, if you did ride in the elevator with Warren Buffett one day…what might be your 30 second elevator speech?

Steve Humphreys: That’s a great question, and I’d keep it simple. Identiv’s strategy is very straightforward. From the beginning, we've been focused on market segments that are early adopters of digitizing the physical world. The obvious ones are physical access and video, where we’ve been opening doors with electronic badges for a long time, but that data behind it is getting more rich. Now, as video and more sensors are being deployed, that entire infrastructure is getting even richer. We’re serving this very complicated convergence that's happening between IT and physical security from a closed system to IP-based, open systems. We’re leveraging that infrastructure and data. As I mentioned earlier, we see a major market opportunity as the physical world goes online, and we are committed to being the leading platform to get there.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks again for joining us today, Steve. Any other subjects you’d like to discuss?

Steve Humphreys: We haven’t quite had the time today to really dive into what Identiv’s team of experts is focusing on in the design and manufacture of embedded high-frequency (HF) and ultra high-frequency (UHF) transponders for objects, such as medical devices, books, toys, athletic apparel, and perishable food items and pharmaceuticals. Identiv’s radio-frequency identification (RFID), near-field communication (NFC), and inlay portfolio of solutions feature various transponder form factors, including dry inlays, wet inlays, labels, tickets, and more. These transponders are uniquely positioned to deliver RFID connectivity to any object in the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Applications range from brand authenticity, consumer engagement, and item level tracking to tamper detection, and embedded sensors. But, that story might need to be told in its own interview, don’t you agree?