Kelli Emerick, Bank of America win top awards
The Smart Card Alliance announced its Outstanding Smart Card Achievement awards at its annual conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. Kelli Emerick was awarded the leadership award for her work with the Secure ID Coalition and Bank of America won the issuer award.
Emerick is executive director of the Secure ID Coalition and has worked in the industry for the past seven years, helping form the organization in 2005. In her role as executive director, she works with industry experts, public policy officials and federal and state agency personnel to promote identity policy solutions that enable both security and privacy protections. Emerick promotes the understanding and appropriate use of smart card technology to achieve enhanced security for ID management systems while maintaining user privacy, including both physical and or logical access to facilities and networks.
Banks of America won the issuer award for its SafePass card. SafePass is Bank of America’s protection in guarding against online banking fraud and identify theft. The SafePass card is a contact smart card with a display built right into the card.
Pressing a button on the card causes the chip to create a one-time password (OTP) that is displayed on the card. By entering the OTP as part of online banking transactions, Bank of America customers get two-factor authentication, providing an extra layer of security when authorizing sensitive transactions.
SafePass also includes a mobile phone component. Customers can get a six-digit, one-time passcode sent as a text message to a mobile phone as an alternative to using the SafePass card. Since the passcode is sent privately to a personal device, the cell phone, it provides a second out-of-band authentication factor.
Two new OSCA’s were awarded for payment innovations and security innovations as well.
The Outstanding Innovation in Payments Technology Award went to ViVOtech for the Citi Tap and Pay NFC Mobile pilot in Bangalore. ViVOtech’s solution for NFC mobile payments enables consumers equipped with NFC handsets to make payments, participate in promotions and redeem coupons at physical stores using their mobile phones.
The ViVOtech solution enables consumers to easily download over the air (OTA) their credit, debit, prepaid or loyalty cards and store them securely on their mobile phones. Consumers can then go to any merchant enabled with a contactless payment reader, select the payment method and just wave their phone at the reader to make a payment. In addition consumers can tap their phones into NFC-enabled smart media (e.g., smart posters) to download personalized and location-based coupons and promotions from retailers that can also be easily redeemed at contactless payment readers.
The Outstanding Innovation in Security Technology Award went to for its FIPS USB product. The Gemalto Protiva Smart Guardian (SG) is a smart card-based encrypted USB drive marketed to government agencies and departments, as well as to enterprises.
USB flash drives can be a convenient way to transfer and share data. However, for government employees they were historically an insecure way to carry around information that is often sensitive or confidential. Gemalto is bringing USB flash drives back to government with a new, completely secure flash drive. The smart card-based Smart Guardian FIPS USB is a zero-footprint secure flash drive, meaning it is self-contained and does not require any software installations or downloads. It is FIPS-140-2 certified, and meets Military Standard 810-F environmental standards. It also offers additional security and interoperability with federal Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/secureidnews-4.gif)
