Education

Be it Android, Apple, tablet or smart phone … mobile devices are everywhere, and users want to do everything on them that they do on their desktop. As the functionality increases so do the threats to the information stored on and accessed by the devices. The same dangers that plague the desktop world are exacerbated in the mobile world. Mobile brings convenience, access and portability with a low cost of entry, but it creates a “perfect storm” of risk, explains Juan Duque, principal in the Federal Enterprise Technology Risk Services at Deloitte. “It can be the same risk you see [...]...

Will the U.S. see additional apps with high-security cards? It’s finally on the horizon: EMV chip cards are coming to the United States. EMV will give broader security against fraud than a traditional magnetic stripe, but it also opens the door to additional applications that could make the card a multi-purpose tool. Will U.S. issuers take advantage of EMV’s full range of capabilities beyond payment? Because the EMV card is essentially a small computer, it’s capable of doing much more than payments. The chip itself is the equivalent of an IBM PC XT from the 1980s, explains Philippe Benitez, Gemalto’s [...]...

Many types but do they play together? In soft drink business, Coke and Pepsi might look the same, but consumers know that these two colas have different flavors. The market for contactless smart cards isn’t much different. The four players that dominate the industry – HID, NXP, Sony and LEGIC – have subtle differences that create the different contactless flavors. In addition to these differences, they also have similarities. They are all in the high frequency (HF) category, meaning that they operate in the 13.56 MHz spectrum and comply with either or both the ISO 14443 or ISO 15693 standard. [...]...

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) mandates a standard for a secure and reliable form of identification to be used by all Federal employees and contractors. Signed by President George W. Bush in August 2004, HSPD-12 initiated the development of a set of technical standards and issuance policies (Federal Information Processing Standard 201 [FIPS 201]) that create the Federal infrastructure required to deploy and support an identity credential that can be used and trusted across all Federal agencies for physical and logical access. The policy, processes and technology in FIPS 201 also reflect specifications defined in a number of other [...]...

Physical security professionals are hearing about public key infrastructure, or PKI, more frequently than ever before. This is because the federal government, through the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the Interagency Advisory Board (IAB), are pushing for higher security in the physical access control world. The federal government says physical access control systems (PACS) need to be upgraded to be FIPS 201 and SP 800-116 compliant. Depending on the level of assurance required for entering the space, each door or turnstile will be secured by an authentication system capable of verifying one or more authentication factors before granting [...]...