The Smart Card Alliance has been invited by the organizers of RSA Conference 2010 to deliver a special one-day tutorial for security professionals interested in overcoming identity management challenges presented by new and changing security regulations, compliance considerations, and data breach threats. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Smart Card Alliance has provided an educational workshop on the use of smart card technology for information security at the RSA Conference, the world’s leading information security conferences and expositions.
The Alliance’s three-part tutorial, “Smart Cards and Identity Management for Public and Private Enterprises” (TUT-M11), will be held Monday, March 1st from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
“Professionals in the enterprise security business are changing their approaches to security policy, identity management, and authentication. They are looking for strong solutions to securely establish identities, as well as to authenticate those identities for both physical and logical access,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “To this end, we have drawn on the expertise of our membership to create this full day tutorial that details the role of smart cards for strong identity management.”
The tutorial will discuss the ways to establish an identity, transform identity attributes into digital credentials, and assign privileges associated with that identity. Presenters will also explain methods for presenting the credentials in a secure, authenticated manner for physical and logical access, and explore real-life use cases for large-scale identity systems.
Security and identity management expert presenters are: Stephen Howard, vice president of operations, CertiPath; Gerald Smith, senior consultant, ID Technology Partners; Iana Bohmer, director identity management, Northrop Grumman; Chris Williams, corporate IT security controls, SAIC; and Bryan Ichikawa, vice president of identity solutions, federal systems, Unisys. Also, Randy Vanderhoof, executive director, Smart Card Alliance, will be moderating the session and giving an update on government and commercial implementations of secure identification and information technology security market trends.

Nepali government is preparing to issue a special digital identity card with all information about a person to replace the traditional identity cards including citizenship certificate, voter’s card, driving license, passport and ATM cards, local media reported on Monday.

According to myrepublica.com, the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers (OPMCM) is working on the technical aspects of the card to be named “Biometric Smart Card”. The card will be recognized as the national identity card.

Initially, the card will be issued for the purpose of election in a specific geographic region for testing. It will also have a person’s fingerprint transcribed digitally.

According to a joint secretary at the OPMCM Hari Prasad Nepal, a specific number will be provided for a citizen with the card. A citizen can avail all facilities provided by the state based on the card.

The smart card includes all information about a person including his name, address, date of birth and marriage records, among others. It will ease the functions of a local registrar including birth, death, migration, marriage registrations.

It will also help to maintain social security and curb the problem of dual citizenship.

As part of the continuous process of introducing the national smart card, two institutions have already agreed to integrate their data under one system.

The Coordinator of the National ID (NID) Project, Pascal Nyamurinda, said in an interview with The New Times that the proposed card would incorporate data of an individual’s driver’s license as well as that of travel documents. Read more »

Efforts to protect information technology systems from hackers, terrorists and even accidental breaches are getting a lot of national attention in the security arena. But a Herndon company, Certipath LLC, is more focused on threats that might walk right through the front door. Read more »

What makes forgery of the smart card impossible has been accomplished through electronic enciphering techniques, says Mustafa Ba?ak. The system contains a mechanism to detect and fix corruptions in its memory cells, and keys for coding and decoding are totally separated.

The nationwide introduction of “smart” identity cards is expected by 2010 with the aim of providing a more multipurpose card and increasing the safety of personal data.
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