Smart cards starting to take off in U.S.
By Reuters
August 21, 2001, 12:25 p.m. PT
news.cnet.com
One of the more compelling arguments for wide-scale use of smart cards in large companies can be summed up in the following, somewhat cryptic question: How often do you call your bank's help desk when using an ATM?
Companies are taking a cue from the banking business, starting to simplify their operations by distributing a single, plastic card to employees that unlocks office doors, gives them access to company networks, e-mail, human resource functions and employee benefits, as well as giving remote access when people are working from home or on the road.
Such smart cards can replace myriad passwords and user IDs that modern office workers typically have.
Under the new systems being offered, a worker can access a range of services by putting a single plastic card into a reader and typing in a personal identification number, or PIN, just the way people have at an automated teller machine for the past 20 years.
Advocates say the smart card makes everything simpler and easier for both workers and employers.
"We believe the smart card is going to become the next killer peripheral in network computing," said Tom Arthur, head of marketing, sales and business development at smart card-technology provider ActivCard, a Fremont, Calif.-based company that moved to Silicon Valley from France about four years ago. "More people know how to use an ATM than know how to use Windows."
There are no passwords to lose with a smart card, and it also makes the job of IT support workers much easier as well, proponents say. To start with, there are a lot fewer calls to the help desk from employees who forgot their passwords.
"You have more than one system and therefore you're going to have more than one password," Arthur said. "You've got remote access, e-mail passwords, you've got a registrar with HR, every single one of those requires identity and provisioning."
While smart cards have been talked and written about for years, and are, on balance, still more popular in Europe, they have been taking off recently in the United States. ActivCard said the U.S. Department of Defense is issuing 4.4 million smart cards using its technology to service personnel to make everything easier.
For example, when loading troops on an airplane for a mission there's an extensive provisioning process that goes on: the service member's payroll, weapons systems, what platoons soldiers are assigned to, just to name a few.
"It takes them all day to put 200 people on a plane" using the old system, Arthur said. "Now, by putting this information on to a card, it has brought that process down to less than an hour."
Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, London bank Lloyds TSB, Barclays and Airbus are others that have decided to use ActivCard's smart card technology, Arthur said.
The whole concept of smart cards and digital identity is certainly not lost on larger technology titans such as Microsoft. The company's forthcoming Windows XP operating system has smart card technology designed in, and will automatically recognize a smart card reader when it's plugged into a desktop or notebook personal computer.
"Using what's called digital certificates, you can put those in a smart card," Arthur said. "You can do Outlook (e-mail), log in, digital signatures, Web-server authentification, all of this and more is transparent."
So, the idea is for smart card readers to tie in, as well, to Microsoft's Passport, which stores a user's name, password and other information to enable seamless access to Web sites that use the technology.
Those now using the company's MSN Internet access service, instant messenger software or Hotmail free Web-based e-mail already have a Passport account to access those services. After logging into Passport, users don't have to re-enter a password for each site.
The idea is that this same technology could be used in conjunction with smart cards to allow for easier online shopping, personal finance transactions and the like.
But it also raises issues of privacy concerns, since employers can now track a much broader array of employee behavior and even turn it into data they can market. Privacy groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, complain that Microsoft's Passport gives the software giant the potential to track and monitor Internet use.
But whatever the case in the consumer space, smart card and digital identity technology and services seem to be taking off in corporate markets.
"In the last year it has been huge, the uptake," Arthur said. "There's just a lot more activity in this space." |
