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

NFC devices can protect Wi-Fi networks

Monday, February 11, 2008

The Wi-Fi Alliance released a list of more than 200 products that have achieved the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED seal of approval for Wi-Fi Protected Setup. This program, launched in January 2007, helps consumer and small-business users more easily set up Wi-Fi networks with strong security protections.


The organization has also started to test NFC support as an additional Wi-Fi Protected Setup network configuration method. In the NFC method, a user touches a card or token to designated areas on an access point and a client device to connect them. NFC joins two previously-tested mechanisms, push-button and PIN entry, to simplify the process of joining devices to a security-enabled Wi-Fi network.

Like the push-button method, the NFC technique may be useful to connect devices that don’t have a keyboard-oriented user interface, such as cameras, gaming devices, and other consumer electronics. Manufacturers will now have even more flexibility in how to deploy Wi-Fi Protected Setup.

A list of all products Wi-Fi CERTIFIED for protected setup, as well as a free white paper which describes the specification in detail, is available at http://www.wi-fi.org[end] 

BlackBerry smart phones account for 80% of NFC-enabled phones in the UK, according to RIM senior director of sales and operations, Gerry Kelliher

“Eighty percent of mobile devices with NFC sold through retail in Q1 2012 were [Blackberry] NFC devices, compared to 72 percent in 2011,” Kelliher told The Inquirer. “We’ve shipped devices from last August compatible with NFC because we really felt that bringing that to market is something people can relate with.”

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With the influx of mobile device usage proliferating corporate networks and IT departments, Network World and SolarWinds teamed up to survey 400 IT professionals to understand the challenges of mobile device management and how corporations faced them.

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Digital certificate provider GlobalSign has launched its new iOS Identity Certificates for iOS device authentication. The certificates provide two-factor authentication for access control to business services.

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Global sales of NFC-enabled handsets increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units, according to a new research report by Berg Insight.

Berg’s report predicts that the NFC handset market will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.8%, boosting annual shipments to 700 million units in 2016.

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Goode Intelligence revealed in its new report, Mobile Phone Biometric Security Analysis and Forecasts 2011-2015, that mobile phone biometric security products and services generated just over $30 million in 2011 and that the market will grow to over $161 million in revenue by 2015.

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NFC payment solutions provider DeviceFidelity has expanded its management team with the hiring of Fabrice Jogand-Coulomb as vice president of Product Management and Philippe Martineau as vice president of Business Development.

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