Excerpts from the newsletter of The Smart Card Society of Southern Africa
Smartcards converge with digital memory cards
The association promoting memory cards used in digital cameras, portable music players and other devices recently announced that it was incorporating smartcard technology into its specification so content providers can better control who can access digital files. The MultiMediaCard Association says smartcard security will be used initially for managing access rights to digital content, or Digital Rights Management, and user authentication for online transactions. The specifications, which are to be made available soon, will allow producers of high-capacity multimemory cards, or MMCs, to take advantage of security features already integrated into smartcards, such as the encryption and authentication technology known as PKI, or public key infrastructure. "Utilising well-proven smartcard technology makes security systems such as PKI, user identity, strong authentication and digital certificates available on SecureMMCs," Takashi Totsuka, co-chairman of the MMCA SecureMMC Technical Subcommittee and senior manager of Japan-based semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Technology Corp, said in a statement. "This can open up many new possibilities and opportunities for security applications on mobile devices." Memory cards can hold up to one gigabyte (1 billion bytes) of data, or enough to store about 640 000 book pages. The largest commercially available smartcard chip only holds 128 000 bytes of space for writing data.
Smartcards control home dialysis machines in Sweden
Swedish medical technology company Gambro AB has purchased 6000 smartcards from Germany-based Orga Kartensysteme GmbH to control operation of its Serena home kidney dialysis treatment machines. Orga card readers are also used with the system, according to a release issued by the smartcard vendor. A patient's card contains a medical prescription for the type of dialysis needed, keeps a detailed record of daily treatments and logs any abnormalities. For example, a doctor creates a prescription for a kidney patient on a PC, then transfers it to the patient's smartcard via a PC-connected card reader during an office visit. When a patient is set to begin their home treatment, they insert the card into a reader attached to the dialysis machine, which accesses the parameters specified by the doctor's prescription, and begins treatment. The smartcard stores details of up to 30 treatments, which doctors can access and analyse on a PC during checkups by inserting the patient's card into the computer's reader. Gambro provides dialysis services to nearly 55 000 patients worldwide across more than 700 medical clinics.
Thais get smart and quickly
The Thai Government says all citizens should be carrying their new smart ID cards by 2006 - despite fears over the security of personal data on the cards. The first 10 000 cards were to be issued on 15 April, with a target of 12 million by the end of the year. The announcement came despite fears voiced by doctors that personal data on the cards could fall into the wrong hands. They claim that, in addition to details such as blood group, genetic information and HIV test results could also be included on cards that could be used against a patient. One proposal is that there should be security layers within the system so that bank staff could not access health details on the cards.
Smart tag reader breakthrough
In many cases, RFID transponders are used on items that are usually far from networked computer infrastructure and cannot be read by a fixed reader - for example trees in a forest, cattle in a field, or goods on a pallet in a warehouse. Passive transponders get their energy to operate from the reader and due to the high powers needed, in the past it was not practical to generate power from batteries in the reader if a long reading range was needed. In addition in order not to interfere with other radio system users such as cellphones, high spectral quality is required from the reader which needs amplifiers that are very energy inefficient, requiring even more energy from the reader batteries. Another issue for portable readers is that one needs a physically small antenna system, as it had to be used comfortably by a person. Conventional passive readers for UHF technology use two antennas (called bistatic) to keep the energising signal away from the sensitive receiver, as the energising field is about 1 million times stronger than the received signal, and yet they both are on the same frequency at the same instant. Thanks, partly, to the past development of its very efficient 200 µW transponders (250 times more efficient than a conventional transponder) and partly due to the development of its new supersensitive receiver technology, Trolley Scan have been testing a new portable monostatic UHF reader that can operate from its inbuilt batteries for periods as long as 11 hours, yet power up and read transponders up to 8 m away. The new reader weighs just 2,5 kg complete with its single antenna system (monostatic), can read transponders even when they are attached to metal objects at distances as far as 8 m, can operate for up to 11 hours from its batteries, can read up to 500 transponders in a reading field at the same time, can read at rates of up to 70 per second and can operate on any UHF frequency in the 860 to 930 MHz band as used in most countries. A data sheet on the new reader is at http://trolleyscan.com/dataport.html
Smart teeth
Dental@x, a system integrator specialising in dental tracing systems, has chosen Inside Contactless and its plug and play contactless reader to provide a way to aid in correct prosthesis manufacturing. It begins in the dentist's office, where the prosthesis mould is implanted with a chip containing patient's file and prescription data. This 'intelligent teeth mould' is then read at the lab with Inside's contactless reader. The proposed system is designed to help meet new European sanitary regulations, while still maintaining convenience and ease of use.
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