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Digimarc Digital Watermarking Selected for Government Smart Card
Program;Company Teams with Prime Contractor Logicon Inc. to Deliver
Additional Securityto Smart Access ID Cards
Thu Aug 17 05:15:00 EDT 2000
TUALATIN, Ore., Aug 17, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Aug. 17, 2000 - Digimarc
Corporation (Nasdaq:DMRC), the world leader in digital watermark technology and
applications, announced today that its Identity Document Mark product has been
selected as a component of a multi-year project to provide smart card solutions
to the U.S. federal government.
Digimarc is participating in the project as a sub-contractor to Logicon Inc., a
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) company. Logicon was one of five prime
system integrators selected in May by the U.S. General Services Administration
(GSA) to develop the government's "Smart Access Common ID Card" system. The
program has a total value to all contractors of $1.5 billion.
Digimarc's patented digital watermark technology enables imperceptible digital
watermarks, called Identity Document Marks, to be added to smart cards and other
documents without requiring extra on-card storage resources or changes in card
design. Identity Document Marks are machine-readable, enabling authentication
and verification of the document. When applied to ID cards, these marks are an
effective deterrent to photo swapping and data alteration.
As part of the project, Digimarc's Identity Document Marks will be offered as an
additional security feature for the smart cards issued by the departments of the
federal government. Over the next few years, the federal government plans to
provide millions of government employees with a single-access smart card for a
variety of e-business uses.
"Digimarc's Identity Document Marks provide a new and low-cost covert security
feature that Logicon can deliver to the federal government departments that
issue smart access cards," said John Gist, program manager, Logicon.
"The ability to verify an employee's identity and provide access to a
high-security facility are critical issues for governments and employers. That's
why industry acceptance of machine-readable digital watermarks to enhance card
security is growing rapidly," said J. Scott Carr, vice president and general
manager of Digimarc's Secure Documents business. "Digimarc's Identity Document
Marks will integrate seamlessly into this comprehensive program, giving the
government additional tools to verify and authenticate employee smart access
cards without consuming expensive smart card resources." |
