U.S. Orders Over 4 Million Digital ID Cards
By Robyn Weisman, www.NewsFactor.com
The United States Department of Defense (news - web sites) (DOD) has purchased approximately 4.3 million "smart" ID cards to distribute to its personnel over the next year.
Total cost of the cards, presently valued at US$8 to $9 each, is expected to be about $35 million. The cards have a three-year lifespan, though they can be updated to include new features such as biometrics and other futuristic identification technologies.
ActivCard (Nasdaq: ACTI - news), a U.S.-based smart-card firm, is providing the software needed to power the card.
The DOD will employ the cards to strengthen both its physical and online security procedures, and the agency may broaden its program by issuing up to 23 million more of the cards over the next several years to relatives of DOD employees, DOD contractors and retired personnel.
Hacker Shields
Similar in appearance to credit cards, the smart ID cards contain a tiny embedded digital processor that, along with the card's magnetic stripe and bar code, provides comprehensive information about the user.
Many believe the cards have the potential to render sensitive network systems almost hackproof, as hackers would be required to spend hundreds of hours to crack the information on each card before they could have enough information to break into the system itself.
Steve Hunt, a vice-president of research for Giga Information Group, told NewsFactor Network that the federal government, and the DOD in particular, has long been a proponent of smart cards.
"The DOD is showing us the value and cost-effectiveness of multi-use cards," Hunt told NewsFactor. "It won't be long before corporations wake up to the same advantages."
Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP - news) and Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW - news) are already embarking on large-scale smart card deployments with ActivCard.
One Card Fits All?
Hunt also said that the most important part of any smart-card deployment is the infrastructure, and that the ActivCard product provides the infrastructure for efficiently managing the information on the cards.
Frank Prince, an Internet security analyst for Forrester Research, told NewsFactor that an event like the military's adoption of smart card technology allows the manufacturers involved to get more mileage out of their research and development (R&D) and infrastructure deployment expenditures.
However, Prince suggested that employing a one-card-fits-all policy may not be the wisest move, and that ultimately a range of smart cards will be created to meet different security and other infrastructure requirements.
"While it is technically possible for one card to be both a physical security system component and a platform for other applications, it isn't necessarily a good idea from a security point of view," said Prince.
Money Train
Prince said that the big money in smart cards is as a platform for services like payments, e-wallets and information storage.
"Those applications need to be supported by secure systems, but the security is secondary," Prince said.
These new smart cards are a big piece of business, although they don't change the landscape fundamentally, Prince said.
"The most important marketing impact might be that a generation of soldiers and their families get used to using smart cards, [creating increased] demand while lessening privacy fears." |
