Here It Comes . . .
OK, well in the last week or so, I have been mentioning more than normal about Smart Cards. Most of the writings have dealt with projections into the future, or how the Federal Government is the biggest customer and awarder of contracts. But, today, I bring you some different content in regards to a specific application of it. And that is, the ATM Card. We all have one (well, most of us do, I don’t have one, everything goes on the good ‘ole Discover Card), and some us couldn’t live without one, especially when it comes to getting some much needed cash. But now, there is going to be a unique type of ATM Card coming out, and this one used Biometrics (primarily Fingerprint Recognition).
The details: “President & CEO of SmartMetric, Inc. C. Hendrick, said that the company's advanced integration of a fingerprint scanner inside a SmartCard provides the company with a technological platform that when combined with the credit card industry standard EMV application allows for the next generation of Banking and Credit Cards to be Biometric Fingerprint activated Cards. Thereby introducing a higher level of security then what is available to date on Credit and ATM Cards . . . SmartMetric has overcome the least secure aspect of the Chip & Pin cards in its reliance on the least secure aspect, namely the use of a "PIN" with the advanced security of Biometrics.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9284/).
My Take
Really, there is nothing new about having Smart Cards work as ATM Cards in the banking and financial industry. For instance, at the end of last year, there were almost 1.3 billion of these cards in use worldwide, and some 15+ million terminals supporting this technology also implemented worldwide. You may be wondering at this point what does EMV stand for???
Well, basically it is an acronym for a banking industry standard which allows for the secure use of Smart Cards to withdraw cash. Some more explanation on this: “EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and VISA, a global standard for inter-operation of integrated circuit cards (IC cards or "chip cards") and IC card capable point of sale (POS) terminals and automated teller machines (ATMs), for authenticating credit and debit card transactions . . . It is a joint effort between Europay, MasterCard and Visa to ensure security and global interoperability so that Visa and MasterCard cards can continue to be accepted everywhere . . . The EMV standards define the interaction at the physical, electrical, data and application levels between IC cards and IC card processing devices for financial transactions.” (SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV).
So, nothing new about this, right??? Well, actually no. There is one piece about this Smart Card Technology which totally caught my eye. And that is, there is no need to remember a password or a PIN Number. All of this resolved through the use of Biometrics. Keep in mind, that with many types of Biometrics applications, especially those that are used on a large scale (such as physical access entry into a warehouse), the end user still has to present a PIN Number of sorts (or even a password), which is used in conjunction with that particular Biometric Technology (in this case, I am thinking of Hand Geometry Recognition). This serves to act as an extra layer of protection, think of you will, a rudimentary style of multi modal security. But with this application as described in this posting, there is none of that. Simply enter your card, and withdraw all the cash you want.
While I think this is personally great, look at the flip side. What if the Biometrics technology at a particular ATM location fails . . . then what does the customer do??? I wonder with this Smart Technology described, if there is another back up solution in place, in case something like this happens. Hey Biometrics is also prone to failure and collapse!!! Another thought: Why can’t this solution be extrapolated to the level of the more complex Biometric applications, so that PIN’s and Passwords will be permanently removed from our vocabulary???
I think that would benefit society greatly, especially IT teams from the smallest to the largest corporations. This Biometrics Smart Card won’t be implemented until Q1 of 2012, so hopefully by then we will know if a new trend will be set forth in the Biometrics Industry.
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