Continentale: Protected and Cost-Effective One-Time Passwords for Independent Insurance Brokers

Continentale is one of Germany’s largest insurers, with premium revenues approaching €4 billion per year. It is a network of companies headed by Continentale Krankenversicherung aG, offering health insurance, life insurance, property insurance and a range of tailored insurances for private clients and mid-sized businesses.

Each year, Continentale’s 7,500 employees process approximately €2.7 billion in insurance benefit pay-outs. Its gross profit totals more than €560 million.

To strengthen its reach across the German market, Continentale connected to the VDG portal, where 10,000 independent intermediaries and brokers interact with the country’s leading insurance providers. But with 1,500 agents using VDG to log in to Continentale accounts, a secure and cost-efficient authentication system was needed. Installing and maintaining a complete authentication system would have been too expensive.

Continentale provided 1,500 registered independent brokers with SecOVID devices from KOBIL. This ensured all data was protected by a strong and cost-efficient two-factor authentication process.

Any brokers logging in had to combine their user ID and static PIN (knowledge factor) with an eight-digit, one-time password provided by a single push of a button on the SecOVID (ownership factor).

Each SecOVID one-time password is calculated using a secret Triple DES key, ensuring complete security and 100% data protection.

And with SecOVID software having been installed on the VDG portal since early 2003, the process of it instantly checking the validity of the password is long-proven.