Identity, Security, Payments, Biometrics, Smart Cards and Authentication News

MCUs provide smart card security

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Renesas Technology Europe has released the RS-4 series of 16bit secure MCUs for smart card applications in high security fields such as ID cards and credit cards. The new secure MCUs can perform complex processing at high speed, making it possible for them to run a multi-application OS (such as Java Card or MULTOS) faster, which is necessary to implement multiple functions on a single smart card. The final product versions will offer smart card MCU security level EAL5+5 certification as defined under the latest version of the Common Criteria for IT Security Evaluation. The RS-4 series can be used in both contact and contactless smart cards.

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Global Industry Analysts Inc. released a report forecasting the outlook on the global smart card market to reach 10.9 billion units by 2015.

GIA credits the growth driven largely by major initiatives in the financial, government and security sectors, with the telecom sector at the way ahead of the pack as the largest end-user. Increasing usage of contactless technology, newer applications and mandatory EMV migration across countries are also major drivers boosting the global market for smart cards.

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Codebench Inc. and Hirsch Identive announced the integration of Codebench’s PIVCheck Plus software with Hirsch Identive’s Velocity Management Software, which aims to provide federal government and commercial customers with a solution for identity validation, authentication and PACS registration using mobile handheld devices.

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The Ralph Carr Judicial Center in Denver, Colorado has selected AMAG Technology’s Symmetry Homeland V7 Security Management System,to provide integrated access control and security management solutions from HID Global.

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The Dutch Ministry of Defense (MoD) has chosen Identive’s SmartFold smart card readers to provide secure remote network access for its employees.

The agency has a lot of restricted and sensitive data that has particular management requirements. The MoD felt that the Identive contact smart card reader would provide the desired level of security, yet be flexible enough to incorporate into the existing network security infrastructure.

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Safety science company UL has acquired Melbourne, Australia-based Witham Laboratories, a global provider of payment software and hardware security reviews.

The acquisition expands UL’s reach into the payment card security assessment field and will enable it to provide security reviews of payment terminal, software and infrastructure.

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Using smart phones for online banking and shopping has been promoted as the next big thing, but adoption has been slow, partly due to the fact that smart phones have security issues. Scientific American reports that this might change with the development of quantum cryptography.

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