Smart card provider Axalto has been chosen to supply at least eight million personalized Vitale 2 cards to the French population starting in 2007 as part of an upgrade of the country’s current health card. Designed to simplify the administrative process for healthcare reimbursement, the card cuts down on paperwork, speeds up the reimbursement process and, with the latest iteration, will be more user-friendly and secure. 

Swedish security company Precise Biometrics AB has launched its Match-on-Card designed to comply with HSPD-12, offering agencies the ability to conduct off-line biometrics authentication using smart cards and fingerprints. 

By Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

Operating under a “hurry up and wait” scenario, states have been scrambling since last year to determine how they’re going to comply with the Real ID Act passed in May 2005. The act is broad enough that states aren’t really sure what will be required of them to make their driver licenses and ID cards Real ID Act-compliant. But if their residents don’t have such licenses, they could be denied entry to federal facilities and commercial aircraft. 

ActivIdentity has launched two new products, including a mini-token, that support OATH’s one-time-password technology. The company’s strong authentication platform is designed to support current and future releases of the OATH HOTP algorithm, and aligns with OATH’s concept of delivering royalty-free open authentication technologies which help resolve security threats such as identity theft, phishing and internal security breaches. 

If there were any gaps left in HID’s ability to supply its customers with a total solution for secure credentials, one more is now filled. The company announced it will buy card printer manufacturer Fargo Electronics in a cash deal. Fargo has successfully transitioned from an equipment provider to a solutions provider in the past 18 months by actively addressing the end-issuer need to tighten the credentialing environment. This fits nicely with HID’s approach to offer a secure, integrated identity architecture. The deal is expected to close at the end of the third quarter of this year. 

A newly released report from the The U.S. Department of Homeland Security states there are only “specific, narrowly defined situations in which RFID is appropriate for human identification.” In most cases, the technology “appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity.”

The 15-page draft report, “The Use of RFID for Human Identification,” critiques a number of planned applications the technology, but contends that RFID often “increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security.”

The department is requesting written comments be made via e-mail to privacycommittee@dhs.gov, by postal mail, or by fax by 12 p.m. EST on May 22, 2006. All comments will be made public on the Privacy Committee’s Web site.  

HSPD-12 mandated ID cards will be ready for new federal employees by October

by Marisa Torrieri, Contributing Editor, AVISIAN Publishing

Come mid-Autumn all new federal employees can expect to be issued a state-of-the-art smart card capable of granting secure access to designated buildings and services.

However, it may be several years before every single existing federal employee gets new powerful plastic with standardized high-security specs, say the agencies in charge of developing the card in accordance with the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12).