Workshop on Storage and Processor Card-based Technologies

On July 8 and 9, the ITL Computer Security Division hosted a workshop on multi technology card issues. The workshop was structured to identify current and planned Federal government activities and related needs, general technical and business issues, existing voluntary industry consensus standards, gap areas in standards coverage, and industry capabilities in the field of ISO/IEC 7810-compliant storage and processor card technologies. Major Federal government programs such as the DoD Common Access Card (CAC) project, Department of State travel document programs, Department of Agriculture electronic benefit transfer programs, and Transportation Security Administration transportation worker identification credential programs were represented, as were large local government programs such as the Bay Area Transit Authority program. Industry participation included representatives of major associations and suppliers of card technology from the United States, Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom. The president of the Smart Card Alliance offered his perspective on a technology road map for secure identification applications.

Representatives of user communities, smart card suppliers, print-based technologies, and optical storage and identification technologies addressed general technology, multi technology integration issues, and both inter-jurisdictional and inter-technology interoperability issues. It was noted that the user community expressed a need for clearer policies regarding card identification content and organization rather than more capable or versatile policy enforcement mechanisms. For example, there was no call by users for higher capacity storage devices. There was significant interest in the effect of privacy policies on the permissible content of cards.

The workshop was the initial step in a requirements definition effort. Follow-on activities will include 1) publication of proceedings of the workshop 2) identification of the gaps in standards coverage, and 3) identification of the multi technology composition issues.

Last updated: May 24, 2005
Page created: April 19, 2003