In the second year of a partnership between the Smart Card Alliance and SourceMedia, the theme of CTST is enabling secure identity and payments in a mobile world.

CTST: The Americas 2009 will take place May 4 – 7 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. The conference sessions are broken down into five tracks: identity and security, payments and applications, mobile and NFC, emerging technologies, Latin America and health care.

“We’ve pulled together multiple tracks to address the different vertical markets that have the most activity in the North American and Latin American markets,” says Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. 

Gemalto has extended its support for strong authentication on the Windows 7 platform using its .NET Bio solution. The solution enables multi-factor authentication using biometrics by building on the foundation provided in the new Windows Biometric Framework (WBF) for Windows 7.

Gemalto is demonstrating its .NET Bio solution with biometrics on a Windows 7 platform in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion at RSA 2009 in through Thursday, April 23rd, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

GenMobi Technologies has unveiled Check-Mates, an anti-fraud technology tailored for Internet consumers who use Web sites such as eBay and Craigslist to buy and sell goods from strangers. Check-Mates verifies the real identity of both users while allowing them to remain anonymous. Should any fraud occur, Check-Mates logs can be released to law enforcement authorities.

Check-Mates validation process starts by users typing in their real names, addresses and phone numbers. From this information, a set of “out of wallet questions” are randomly generated to confirm an individual’s identity. If both users answer the questions correctly, they receive an email stating that both identities were confirmed and logs will be kept for future reference. 

Oberthur Technologies has delivered the first prototypes of the Generic ID Card Command Set (GICS) card compatible with Microsoft Windows 7.

ID-One GICS, an identity applet, has been developed to answer the needs for a generic card command set that provides functionalities required by both government and corporate applications. Backward compatible with PIV, this product offers data management, enhanced cryptographic protocols that are compliant with NIST recommendations and is based on the standardization work done under ANSI INCITS. 

The United Kingdom is considering adding EMV functionality to its ID cards, according to ZDNet UK. EMV is used in UK payment cards to protect against fraud and some say it can be useful while others say it’s not secure enough.

With chip-and-PIN cardholders could access government and private-sector services online using the PIN to verify their identity. Business too could take advantage of such functionality and have individuals authenticate using a PIN. Using EMV could also cut the cost of the system since it’s already a widespread standard. 

Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) will present its new StarSign cards at the RSA Conference in San Francisco next week. The card is the company’s first to conform to the FIPS 201 standards.

Another product that will be showcased is G&D’s StarSign Mobility Token, which provides secure mobile access to company data from any computer. The StarSign Mobility Token ID1 is a mobile, storage medium for data and applications that supports smart card-based authentication. G&D is also presenting joint solutions with partners such as ActivIdentity, Crealogix and Giritech. 

Gemalto announced it is delivering 900,000 of its Sealys Laser-Secured electronic identification cards to the Ministry of Interior of Lithuania.

The card features contactless technology, which stores a fingerprint biometrics, for identity verification at border crossings. It also embeds a contact microprocessor that contains a certificate for online identification and a certificate for electronically signing official documents such as contracts and declarations.
 Gemalto delivers the cards to its local partner Lodvila, a security printing company in Lithuania and prime contractor on the project.