Whitepaper: Smart Cards Offer Better Security for Online Transactions
PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J. — The Smart Card Alliance Identity Council released a whitepaper this week illustrating why online shoppers should choose smart card credentials for online transactions that require higher levels of security.
Titled,“Smart Card Technology and NSTIC Brief,”the whitepaper reviews the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) initiatives and discusses how smart card technology can provide the advanced credentialing capabilities needed to enable high assurance in the NSTIC identity ecosystem.
According to the report, smart card technology reduces the risk of fraud by minimizing the risk that credentials or tokens are false. Other advantages to using the technology within the NSTIC ecosystem include:
- Smart cards are deployed around the world for financial services, mobile communications, healthcare and e-government.
- Smart card technology enables secure identity verification while helping to protect personal privacy.
- Only the cardholder is able to initiate or verify a transaction using a PIN, biometric data or both.
- Smart card technology-based tokens can store electronic credentials and reduce the risk of the credentials being copied, altered or hacked.
- Smart card technology-based tokens can hold many different identity credentials and support multiple authentication mechanisms.
The Smart Card Alliance has publicly endorsed the White House’s NSTIC initiative, which aims to improve on the credentials currently used to access the Internet and authenticate identity online. Additionally, government officials plan to create and secure a trusted identity ecosystem, eliminating the need for users to remember a list of user names and passwords to access various online services.
“As our use of the Internet has increased, so has cybercrime, especially identity theft. The NSTIC recognizes that traditional forms of online identity verification are no longer sufficient, and takes on the critical task of better securing our online lives,” says Bryan Ichikawa, senior manager, Deloitte & Touche LLP, and chair of the Identity Council. “The goal of this paper is to educate stakeholders on how smart card technology fits many of the guiding principles of the NSTIC, and can meet the challenges presented by a heterogeneous identity framework while providing assurance that transactions are secure.”
To download the whitepaper, click here.
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