digital signatures

Less taxing tax returns The Hungarian Tax Office has implemented atax return system that will allow the country’stop 500 corporate taxpayers to use smart cardand digital signature technology to submittheir returns electronically.

The new web-based system was supplied byOberthur Card Systems, and will provide strongsecurity, as well as significantly reducing processingtimes, thanks to removal of paper from the process.The project is particularly significant as it repre-sents the Hungarian Government’s first widespreadapplication of digital signature technology thesupplier claims.

Oberthur supplied the Tax Office with itsAuthentIC Web Pack, which comprises Java basedcryptographic smart cards, card readers and relatedclient software. The smart cards have the highestsecurity certification (EAL4+).

CCoonnttaacctt:: Wais Wasiri at Oberthur Card Systems,Tel: +33 6 10 63 01 60, email:w.wasiri@oberthurcs.com

government

New England smart cardpilot gets under wayA smart card pilot program for eightautomated government programs in the NewEngland region of the USA is to be rolled outfollowing the award of a contract to HitachiAmerica by New England Partners (NEP).

NEP is a consortium of the six New Englandstates – Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine,Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont – incooperation with the US Department of Agricul-ture’s Food Nutrition Services (FNS), which plansto improve the delivery of a variety of healthcareprograms for economically disadvantaged families.

Each state has designated one county toparticipate in the 21-month NEP pilot. Partici-pants will be provided smart cards with theirbenefits and personal data stored in the card’schip. They will be able to purchase groceries,coordinate health appointments, and track theirhealthcare progress with the smart cards. Thispilot will include approximately 625 POSterminals at 90 retailer sites and more than 20provider sites, as well as 10,000 participants.

The NEP Pilot plans to provide a proof ofconcept for reorienting government servicestoward a ‘participant centered’ focus. The sharedpatient records maintained on the microprocessorchip will enable improved case management, andwill eliminate redundant activities, services anddata collection. If the pilot is deemed a success,

each state will determine whether it will imple-ment the program statewide.

Hitachi will provide the microprocessor chips,the MULTOS operating system, program manage-ment, project management, the host hardware andsoftware solution, system documentation andtesting.

Other suppliers include: Giesecke & Devrientwhich will produce the smart cards and provide thepre-personalization services; Dreifus Associates,which will provide training, user documentation,and ongoing operational support; CardSystemsSolutions; and Wear Logic.

The project is financed under an agreement withthe New Hampshire Department of Health andHuman Services, Office of Community and Pub-lic Health, with funds provided by the State ofNew Hampshire and/or the United States Depart-ment of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service.

CCoonnttaacctt:: Gerard Corbett at Hitachi America,Tel: +1 650 244 7900, email:gerard.corbett@hal.hitachi.com

biometrics

US$1.2m CAC projectawarded to BearingPointThe US Department of Defense’s (DoD) Bio-metrics Management Office (BMO) has awardeda US$1.2 million contract to BearingPoint. Thesupplier will work with the DoD’s BiometricsFusion Center (BFC) to evaluate the potentialuse of contactless smart card and biometrictechnologies with the department’s CommonAccess Card in a physical access environment.

The contract is the third awarded in a series ofthree consecutive technology demonstrations con-ducted by the DoD to assess the value of biometricsintegrated with the CAC. BearingPoint claims tobe the only prime vendor to be selected for all threecontracts.

BearingPoint’s team members on this effortinclude SPYRUS, SAFLINK Corporation, PreciseBiometrics, XTec, NetVersant and Datastrip. The Common Access Card is a smart card designedto improve security at DoD installations world-wide. It is intended to enable physical, authorizedaccess to installations, buildings and controlledspaces, as well as to gain access to military computernetworks and systems. Over one million cards havebeen issued to date, with distribution expected toexceed four million in the next year.

BearingPoint will develop and evaluate a varietyof scenarios that will assist the government inselecting a contactless technology solution to beintegrated with a biometric identifier on, or with,the CAC.

BearingPoint’s team will provide development,training, testing and post-delivery support to the Department of Defense’s Biometric Working

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news

Card Technology Today February 2003

• The Washington Metropolitan Area TransitAuthority (WMATA) has selected ERG TransitSystems and Northrop Grumman InformationTechnology to install and operate a newRegional Customer Service Center for a smartcard-based fare collection system, known asSmarTrip. The WMATA project will allowpassengers to use a single smart card to pay faresacross 17 transit systems in the WashingtonD.C. area, Maryland and Northern Virginia.The SmarTrip system is expected to grow to acard base of more than one million over a five-year period. The project involves the establish-ment and operation of a smart card customerservice center, card management and theclearing and settling of smart card transactions.The new system will interface with existinginstalled hardware such as gates and readers.

• IDenticard, a producer of biometric securityidentification, asset tracking and access controlsystems, and Bioscrypt, a provider of fingerprinttechnology, are working together to couplesmart cards with biometrics. The suppliers havepaired up Identicard’s IDentiSMART family ofcontactless smart cards with Bioscrypt’s V-Smart,an integrated MIFARE smart card andfingerprint reader for access control. When usingV-Smart, the fingerprint template is stored onthe IDentiSMART card, so there is no remoteprocessing and no need to network the readersfor managing the population of biometrictemplates. To gain access to a secured door, thecardholder presents the smart card and placesthe pre-registered finger on the reader.

• South Korea’s largest telecommunicationprovider KT Corporation (formerly KoreaTelecom), recently selected Bell ID’s ANDiSManagement Systems for the realisation of alarge-scale multi-application EMV smart cardsolution. The web-based system enablescentral life cycle management of KT Corpora-tion’s EMV smart cards, applications andcryptographic keys.

• Samsung Electronics Co has announcedthat its 64KB smart card with crypto functions(product code S3CC9PB) has received EAL4+level Common Criteria (CC) certification.Common Criteria, which is being consideredas a global standard, is an international stand-ard for the evaluation of IT product security.EAL represents the level of confidence of an ITsecurity product or system evaluated withCommon Criteria. European digital signaturelegislation, for example, requires an EAL4 levelof compliance. Samsung’s S3CC9PB features ahigh-density 64Kbyte EEPROM and 1024bitRSA crypto processor along with a 3-DES

engine.

in brief

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