Product News

For the last few years, the UK factory of PDC EMEA has been a part of the Made in Britain (MiB) association. MiB is a growing community of Britain’s manufacturers applying protected, collective marks to products, packaging, websites and social media. By joining, PDC EMEA made it clear to consumers that their name badge products are manufactured in Britain to the very highest standards.

Due to the UK government's mandate for every business to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, MiB initiated the Green Growth Programme to help businesses advance their progress towards being more sustainable. The program provides businesses with a benchmark to understand where they rank amongst their peers, where there is a need for improvement and where they excel and can aid others in the community. As an MiB member, PDC EMEA was invited to take the specifically designed Green Growth survey to see where they ranked among other members.

PDC EMEA demonstrated its sustainability initiatives through its eco-friendly products, such as name badges made from sustainable and recyclable materials. They have also been looking into environmentally friendly solutions for their packaging and reviewing their manufacturing processes to make them more efficient. All this combined with PDC EMEA’s high scores in governance, customer engagement and accreditations, helped them rank in the top 25 percent of companies who took the survey.

Learn more our eco-friendly processes

By completing the Green Growth Survey, the PDC EMEA's factory in the UK has progressed its sustainability journey and joined a cohor of more sustainable, resilient and competitive businesses.

“As a global organization, it’s our intention that we, locally as well as globally, create and leave behind a planet that future generations want to and can live on,” said Alexandra Mery, Product Manager, PDC EMEA. “We strive to learn more our eco-friendly processes create a working environment that makes our employees proud, build brands that people want to work and collaborate with and design sustainable products that serve the needs of our customers. Joining the Green Growth Programme was a great way to assess our progress and show our commitment to making our products and our processes more sustainable and contributing toward being net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Discover our eco-friendly people ID solutions

If you've been browsing our catalogue looking for a new ID card holder, chances are you've encountered the term "CardProtector badge holder" at some point. And unless you're as familiar with ID products as we are, you probably had a very basic (but valid) question: “What is it?”

It sounds like it could be one of several things but it’s certainly not just another name for a non-flexible badge holder. CardProtector badge holders serve as a pretty basic solution to a very modern problem.

What is a CardProtector badge holder?

A CardProtector badge holder is a type of ID card holder that contains a thin layer of metal. Also known as shielded card/badge holders, they be flexible or rigid, and are available in different models.

What does a CardProtector badge holder do?

This kind of holder shields the inserted smart card from being read or scanned by card readers thanks to a specific metal insert.

Fully understanding this requires a bit of background information on how smart cards work.

Normally, a smart card in a radio-frequency identification (RFID) program works by having an internal chip that interacts with a dedicated card reader.

The card reader contains an antenna that scans for RFID chips. When the scanning antenna picks up a chip, it takes the data from that chip and sends it back to a receiver that translates the data for use in payment systems, access control systems and more.

The thin piece of metal material that is the major part of a shielded badge holder helps to interrupt this process. The metal material helps to prevent the smart chip from being picked up by the antenna of a smart card reader.

Essentially, the metal protects the chip from the scanning antenna, sending the waves bouncing back and preventing the transmission of any data.

Why would you want to block an RFID card from being scanned?

It seems kind of counterintuitive, doesn't it? After all, the point of RFID cards is for them to be contactless and convenient, to allow for the quick collection of data or granting of access.

However, many of today's RFID cards can contain sensitive data. For example, an employee ID smart card used at a large corporation may contain information like the cardholder's name, title and security clearance. Even if the face of the card just features a name and a photo, a wealth of data may exist on the chip beneath the surface.

The data exists on the card so the system can use it to verify access, which is a great use of an RFID smart card; however, it isn't data you'd want out there for public consumption.

Contactless payment with credit cards is becoming an increasingly popular method of payment as well. Some of these cards use similar technology to that referenced above, potentially leaving a card vulnerable to unauthorized data access by anyone with a rogue reader.

Are people actually being victimized by this kind of data theft?

The short answer is "yes," but the extent of the damage being done is unclear. Various reports and articles have shown that it is, in fact, possible for a data thief armed with the right card reader to pick up information off of a smart card or chip-containing credit card. This kind of data theft is known as skimming, a type of identity theft mainly focused on acquiring user data.

Many credit card companies have taken steps to make the kind of information that can be gleaned from skimming essentially useless. For example, some cards issue a one-time PIN for each transaction, while others ensure that no card numbers, CVVs or names are transmitted via RFID.

However, corporations, government offices and other organizations using RFID-based smart cards may not have taken the same steps, potentially leaving their user data vulnerable. Such vulnerabilities would be particularly troubling for high-security organizations or government offices dealing in classified data or intelligence.

How can I protect a smart card from data skimming?

The simplest method, as this post has hopefully made clear, is to use a CardProtector badge holder.

As mentioned above, shielded badge holders contain thin layers of metal that prevent the card from being read by a scanning antenna. In the event that a data thief held a reader to your smart card, the shielded badge holder would prevent it from being read.

Shielded badge holders come with the added benefit of looking just like regular badge holders. They're available in several styles, including open-face and multi-card.

When using a CardProtector holder, you can have your card scanned for legitimate purposes by simply removing it from the holder and passing by a reader. This functionality makes shielded badge holders a great way to prevent data theft without rendering your card unusable in the process.

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Everyday we hear about being more eco-friendly and sustainable. No big surprise when we know 7 billion inhabitants withdraw what they need from the finite resources available to us all. A resolution that has no downsides and that everyone can participate in is to increase our diligence around sustainability.

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In the events and conferences environment, how can you put sustainability at the heart of everything you do? We take our environmental credentials seriously and have long recognised the vital importance of sustainability, not just in how we operate but also in the solutions we develop for our customers.

For many years we have been proud members of Sedex, a not for profit membership organisation dedicated to driving improvements in ethical and responsible business practices in global supply chains. We also put sustainability front and central when it comes to new product development. Whether it’s a reusable badge such as our chalkboard badges that you just wipe clean to re-use, or our range of lanyards made from both 100% recycled materials and sustainable bamboo, we aim to make it simple for you to makeyour events sustainable. If you have resolved to make your events greener then drop us a line and we’ll show you how.

PDC BIG have been supplying name badges to leading retailers, finance, events, healthcare and leisure companies for nearly 30 years. Here are 5 of the biggest reasons that organisations and companies should use name badges.