Government ID, Smart Cards, Identification and Authentication

Entrust offers SaaS credentialing

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Entrust Inc., is extending its public key infrastructure technology to provide the Entrust Credentialing Service, an end-to-end hosted solution for organizations to issue unified smart card credentials. This system is tailored for enterprise, citizen or government environments that want to secure physical and logical access, virtual private networks (VPN) and other enterprise functions and capabilities.

Based on Entrust Managed Services PKI, the credentialing service includes all necessary components including identity vetting, data capture, personalization, printing, issuance and revocation. The credential facilitates mobility, interoperability and security of end-user access by employing one credential for building access, computer/logical access and a range of applications, including secure e-mail, document-signing and more.


In advanced deployments, the multipurpose smart cards can also include the electronic machine-readable travel document (eMRTD) data identical to an e-passport. This capability helps extend the value of the service, particularly for law enforcement organizations and government departments.

Entrust’s multipurpose smart cards that include eMRTD credentials are compliant with all ICAO standards, including Basic Access Control and Extended Access Control.

As a hosted service, Entrust credentials can even be scaled to take advantage of future biometric standards, including fingerprints, iris scans or facial recognition — all on the same smart card.

An additional layer of security can be implemented for organizations that require strong authentication for user access to VPNs or sensitive applications. Entrust’s grid authenticator can be embedded on the reverse side of the smart card. The easy-to-use grid consists of numbers and characters in a row-column format. Upon login, users are presented with a coordinate challenge and must respond with the information in the corresponding cells from the unique grid tied to their identity.

Entrust Managed Services PKI enables organizations to establish and maintain a trustworthy environment by providing certificates that secure many off-the-shelf applications using encryption, digital signatures and strong certificate authentication. This enables organizations to control access to resources, prevent theft of information, and comply with privacy and digital signature regulations. [end] 

Neurotechnology announced that it has developed three versions of embedded solutions for Android-powered devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Specifically, Neurotechnology has ported its VeriFinger Embedded software development kit (SDK), which authenticates user identities via fingerprints, VeriLook Embedded SDK, which authenticates user identities via facial recognition, and MegaMatcher Embedded SDK, which authenticates user identities via both fingerprints and facial recognition. A version that utilizes iris recognition also is in the works.

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The U.S. General Services Administration has awarded Entrust Inc. a four-year, $4.5 million contract to continue providing hosted PKI services and digital certificates as the security infrastructure for HSPD-12 initiatives. An incumbent in the re-compete proposal, Entrust has provided managed PKI solutions and services for the GSA’s credentialing program since 2007.

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Entrust Inc. has made enhancements to its Entrust Discovery digital certificate product by expanding search capabilities for digital certificates residing within Microsoft’s Cryptographic APIs and adding more than 25 basic or custom policy field alerts to ease certificate management.

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The December meeting of the influential Government Smart Card Interagency Advisory Board (IAB) was recently held in Washington D.C. FIPS201.com was on hand to cover the event and has provided, as a service to the IAB and the smart card community, an audio recording of the presentations. Click on the link below to access a list of audio and accompanying PowerPoint slides (in pdf format).

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The November meeting of the influential Government Smart Card Interagency Advisory Board (IAB) was recently held in Washington D.C. FIPS201.com was on hand to cover the event and has provided, as a service to the IAB and the smart card community, an audio recording of the presentations. Click on the link below to access a list of audio and accompanying PowerPoint slides (in pdf format).

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AVISIAN Publishing is pleased to announce the release of the interactive version of the winter 2011 issue of Regarding ID.

The interactive feature enables a miniature mode that you can thumb through as well as a full screen mode that allows you to read the magazine as if it were on the desk in front of you.

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