ActivIdentity Plans Support for the Emerging ISO/IEC 24727 Standard
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FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 3 -- ActivIdentity Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTI), a global leader in digital identification for government and enterprise, today announced its plan to support the emerging ISO/IEC 24727 smart card interoperability framework standard as it is finalized and approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). By extending its industry leading smart card software to support ISO/IEC 24727, ActivIdentity continues its strategy of support for global industry standards to ensure application interoperability across multiple standards and provide a migration path for organizations looking to implement secure, cost-effective authentication solutions based on this emerging standard.
The ActivIdentity smart card management system, applets, and client software, designed as industry and government standard-compliant solutions, are delivered in partnership with the world's leading system integrators. The ActivIdentity platform provides open APIs which enables integration with the other key elements of large scale smart card based identification programs, including: identity management, identity verification, physical security integration, PKI and Biometrics.
"As the global leader in digital identity assurance, ActivIdentity has always significantly contributed to the development of industry standards such as CAC, GSCIS, and PIV," said Jason Hart, ActivIdentity chief executive officer. "As a result, our applications support multiple standards, provide a clear path for our customers to make post issuance field upgrades of the card and support new standards as they emerge."
"ActivIdentity views the ISO/IEC 24727 standard as an important step towards global interoperability of smart card applications," said Dominic Fedronic, chief technology officer for ActivIdentity. "All of ActivIdentity products are based on a flexible architecture which supports multiple card edges, enabling our customers to evolve their systems as standards evolve. We can utilize this capability to provide a migration path for our customers that choose to adopt ISO 24727."
"ISO 24727 series of standards could be for the identification market as important as GSM 11.11 was for the Cellular market in the early 90's. It allows client applications to be built with a common coherent approach in the definition and use of electronic identification documents which by technical nature, country laws or historical back ground culture will always have differences," said Gilles Lisimaque / Partner at Identification Technology Partners, Inc / Editor ISO 24727 Part 5. "I am glad to see commercial company leaders in this market, acknowledge the usefulness of this effort and decide to endorse such an architecture in their product line."
"Making the decision to adhere to a standard still under development is a bold commitment for a company as it may require multiple designs before the standard is stable. But contributing to a standard by putting it at work is the best way to strengthen its ability to better serve this application vertical, allowing the ID industry as a whole to benefit from the hands on experience of companies such as ActivIdentity," concluded Lisimaque.
"ActivIdentity and Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas are committed to the Standards creation process. Both companies dedicate considerable resources to participate directly in this global consensus-building process. ActivIdentity and SMA rely heavily upon Standards when crafting world-class solutions," said Gerald Smith, new business development manager for SHARP Microelectronics of the Americas and Project Editor for ISO/IEC 24727 Part 1 entitled Architecture. "I am excited about what ISO/IEC 24727 offers Smart Card enabled system developers. The capabilities discovery mechanisms and extensible base of services this Standard details permits true interoperability across diverse Smart Card solutions."
"ActivIdentity attributes its success in the smart card identification market, like our recently announced European government customer win, to our complete open standards-based line of smart card applications, smart card management, clients and applets. Our approach ultimately frees customers from the world of limited proprietary solutions while allowing them to reduce the time, cost and risk to deploy their most critical security applications throughout their organization," concluded Hart.
About ISO 24727
ISO/IEC 24727 is a set of programming interfaces for interactions between integrated circuit cards and external applications to include generic services for multi-sector use. The organization and the operation of the ICC conform to ISO/IEC 7816-4.
It consists of five parts Part 1: Architecture, Part 2: Generic card interface, Part 3: Application interface, Part 4: API administration and Part 5: Testing procedure. Part 1 is approved; Parts 2-4 are expected to be approved during 2007 and Part 5 is likely to be approved in 2008.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is leading the US contribution of this worldwide ISO standard through ANSI. Australia is proposing to use ISO/IEC 24727 as a common framework for multiple large scale smart card projects, including the Queensland Drivers License Program and the Australian Government Access Card project. In Europe the European Citizen Card standard Cent/TS 15480 is endorsing its use.
About ActivIdentity
ActivIdentity (formerly ActivCard) is the trusted provider of digital identity assurance solutions for the enterprise, government, healthcare, and financial services markets worldwide. The company provides the only fully- integrated platform for the secure issuance, management and use of single secure digital identities.
The ActivIdentity platform allows users to access information, communicate and conduct electronic transactions anywhere, anytime, regardless of differing security requirements and authentication challenges. Solutions include secure remote access, single sign-on, large scale enterprise access card systems, and multi-channel identification and verification.
More than 15 million users and 4,000 customers worldwide rely on solutions from ActivIdentity. Headquartered in Fremont, Calif., the company has development centers in the United States, Australia, France, and sales and service centers in more than ten countries. For more information, visit www.actividentity.com.
CONTACT:
Kristy Dennis of ActivIdentity,
+1-510-745-6259
or kristy.dennis@actividentity.com;
or Tim Polakowski of McGrath/Power Public Relations,
+1-408-727-0351
or timp@mcgrathpower.com,
for ActivIdentity
Web site: www.actividentity.com/
