ID World International Congress provides a unique CEO-level exploration of RFID
01 November, 2003
category: Biometrics, Contactless, Library, RFID
“The world is prepared to sacrifice some of its personal liberties for better world security,” GENERAL JOHN WATKINS, CIO, FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTORS
“Physical security and IT security professionals look at both internal and external threats. Though traditionally separate, they are being brought together via a common credential used to protect access,”
JOSEPH GRILLO, PRESIDENT & CEO,
Assa Abloy ITG
The ID World 2003 International Congress provided a rare opportunity to hear some of the security and technology industry’s most influential senior executives share their views on modern identification.
The conference was held on November 20-21 in Paris and followed last year’s success with another show packed with the latest radio frequency technology news and innovations delivered by top senior corporate executives from key industry players.
Organized by the Italian-based communication firm, Wise Media, the theme for this year’s event was “the ID revolution in the real and digital worlds.” Located at the Hilton Charles de Gaulle, the event attracted both speakers and attendees from across Europe and around the globe. The event’s educational sessions focused on logical and physical security, identification of assets in logistics, retail automation and anti-counterfeiting and personal identity authentication for government, corporate and financial services.
Last year, ID World attracted more than 160 attendees and by the looks of that year’s crowd the number was likely exceeded.
On day one, the morning included an examination of the growing market for RFID technologies and a review of key developments in RFID for both logistics and credentialing applications. During the afternoon sessions, the focus was the convergence of security in the physical and logical realms.
On the second day, two separate tracks ran concurrently with attendees selecting–based upon their area of responsibility and interest–between the use of RFID in asset tracking and logistics or in personal authentication and trusted identity functions.
Some highlights included:
Joseph Grillo, President and CEO of Assa Abloy ITG, detailed his views on the convergence of the physical and logical security realms. He cited reasons for this convergence including: “risks associated with a casual access to IT resources and a lack of accountability,” as well as trends such as “a massive expansion of IT infrastructure, increasing sophistication of physical security systems, skillsets of industries becoming more universal, and a growing desire to reduce costs via a single credential.” One result, said Mr. Grillo, is the emerging senior-level position of the chief security officer (CSO), responsible for both physical and logical security.
Joseph Krull, a Principal with security consultant KSC, outlined the concept of “digital dust,” the pervasive bits of personal data that are the remnants of the countless electronic transactions made by an individual during an average day. He described the “dust” remaining after every internet session, each email access, the multitude of mobile and fixed line phone calls, and every financial transaction to provide a glimpse at the record left in our digital wake.
General John Watkins, former U.S. Department of Defense technology leader and current CIO for Fairchild Semiconductors, described his vision of an RFID and biometric-enabled future. “I believe there will come a time when you and I are defined biometrically.” Citing the example of the now-accepted practice of videotaping people in all public areas (e.g. hotels, parking lots, traffic stops) as an example of how societal acceptance of invasive technologies changes with time.
Bill Allen, Marketing Director for Texas Instruments RF-id Systems, explored the necessity for contactless credentials in the new more advanced access control systems. He profiled the use of RFID-based credentials in a variety of installations including corporate, education, and correctional environments.
To learn more about the event and make plans to attend the next ID World International Congress, visit http://www.idworldonline.com.