“Joining SPAC Alliance means actively committing to a European digital sovereignty approach, fostering collaboration between industry players to build robust security solutions.”
Gaëtan COURTHIAL
Head of Sales & Marketing
Overview of ISRA Cards’ activities
ISRA Cards is a French company specialized in the manufacturing and personalization of smart cards, with particular expertise in physical and logical access control solutions. We operate both as an industrial supplier and as a systems integrator / technology partner for our clients, offering end-to-end solutions based on secure technologies for digital signature and strong authentication using PKI and/or FIDO2.
Our production facility is located in France, where we manufacture 50 million cards per year (with an annual turnover of €12M), serving various markets: retail, leisure, transport, luxury, as well as the security, identification, and strong authentication market.
Our objectives are to:
- Strengthen our position as a key player in the European market
- Support our clients in the transition toward unified and secure identification solutions
What are your main security challenges?
Our primary challenge, which is also shared by our clients, is to deliver products that are robust against the various intrusion threats, whether physical or cyber.
We focus on aligning physical security with cybersecurity: a badge should no longer only open a door, but also guarantee strong authentication on a workstation.
We therefore need to anticipate customer and market needs by offering innovative solutions, such as combining multiple technologies on a single card, integrating Common Criteria–certified components, relying on recognized cryptographic mechanisms (AES, ECC, etc.), and adopting well-established standards (ANSSI, FIDO, EAL, etc.).
Why join SPAC Alliance and its ecosystem?
Joining SPAC Alliance means actively engaging in a European digital sovereignty initiative, fostering collaboration between industry stakeholders to build robust security solutions.
It is also an opportunity to:
- Contribute to the harmonization of practices between physical and logical security
- Participate in protocol standardization and the deployment of trusted technologies recognized by authorities, particularly ANSSI
- Increase our visibility and strengthen industrial synergies within a committed ecosystem
What benefits can the SSCP protocol bring to the security market? And to ISRA Cards?
The SSCP protocol adds an additional layer of security where some existing standards may still leave room for vulnerabilities.
For the market:
- It enables end-to-end encrypted communication, including between components from different manufacturers
- It promotes secure interoperability and infrastructure sharing, while remaining aligned with sovereignty objectives
For ISRA Cards, whose cards are certified CCEAL5+ or CCEAL6+, SSCP helps extend the security chain upstream, ensuring fully end-to-end secure transactions.
The importance of certifications and standardization in the security market
Certifications are now essential to guarantee the reliability, compliance, and interoperability of security solutions.
They notably ensure that:
- Components have been evaluated by independent third parties
- Solutions meet the requirements of authorities such as ANSSI
- Solutions remain sustainable over time through active monitoring of evolving risks
- Systems can be deployed at scale, with confidence, in critical environments such as public administrations, sensitive infrastructures, and healthcare
For ISRA Cards, this is also a commercial requirement. Our customers, in France and across Europe, expect certified products that can be integrated into secure information systems and are compatible with existing frameworks.
This is why we are committed to a continuous approach to compliance, testing, and standards monitoring, in order to anticipate tomorrow’s requirements.
