Net 1 UEPS Technologies Inc. has been awarded the National Switch and Smart Card Payment System tender by the Central Bank of Ghana. The award was issued based on the vision of the Central Bank of Ghana to provide the Ghanaian financial services industry a new biometrically protected smart card designed to deliver affordable financial services to the majority of all Ghanaian citizens. The solution, that will be implemented over the next nine months, is designed to achieve interoperability between all the existing ATMs and Point Of Sales devices. All ATMs and POSs will be replaced with new ATMs and POSs which will be connected directly to the new processing system.

Athena Smartcard Solutions is introducing the ASEDrive IIIe USB Bio KB, a combined biometric smart card keyboard which incorporates the UPEK® TouchChip® TCS2 fingerprint sensor, enabling strong user authentication and password-free logon to PCs. The USB keyboard also incorporates an ASEDrive Smart Card reader for multi-factor authentication. The keyboard and smart card reader comply with the PC/SC standards, Windows 2000, XP and Vista, Linux and MAC. The UPEK TCS2 area sensor is mounted for easy user access and supports Bio API and Precise Biometrics’ Match-on-Card technology for strong multi-factor authentication.

SecuDesktop Pro v2.0 software, which uses SecuGen’s FIPS 201 approved template extraction and matching algorithms has been released by SecuGen. At the core of SecuDesktop Pro is SecuGen’s NIST certified, MINEX-compliant template extraction and matching algorithms that have been tested and approved for use in the U.S. government’s PIV program as defined by the FIPS 201 standard. SecuGen is offering this new version of SecuDesktop to meet demands for new technologies that comply with FIPS 201.

Examining the popular solution for security, mobility and compliance
By Ryan Kline, Contributing Editor

Many of the more than 180,000 organizations using Citrix have to deal with new concerns about security, and they all share the same goal: to keep their system, and their Citrix implementation, as user friendly as possible. Smart cards, one time password (OTP) devices, and biometrics are all being used to authenticate the user in Citrix-controlled environments. The company is doing its part to keep up with these increasing security demands by implementing a new partnering process to certify third party security products as “Citrix ready.”

By Ryan Kline, Contributing Editor

On May 24, 1844, the message, “What hath God wrought!” was sent by telegraph from Baltimore, Maryland, to our nation’s Capitol in Washington, DC. A new era in long-distance communications had begun. By the 1860s, the telegraph revolution was in full swing, and telegraph operators had become a valuable resource. Each operator developed his own unique signature and could be identified simply by his tapping rhythm.

The Biometrics Consortium, a leading industry group, defines biometrics as “automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are; face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions.”