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April 2007 • Volume 12 Number 4 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance, Inspiration comes from many different sources. Sometimes, inspiration is a result of adversity and other times it is a product of your successes. Whatever the source may be, when inspiration envelops you, it seems to put into focus all the things that get lost in the frantic pace of trying to make a difference and an impact based on what you believe in. This month has been full of both adversity and successes, and as a result very inspiring. Those feelings were being stoked at the beginning of April as the final preparations for the 6th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference in Washington, DC were underway. The long hours and constant reminders from my wife and family that I needed to stop some time to sleep and eat were taking their toll on me when it finally hit me about one week before the event that “it is finished.” The speakers were in place, the exhibitors had their instructions, the conference facility stopped calling to ask me to make yet another final decision, and everything suddenly got quiet – like the time when a hurricane is passing directly overhead. Only in this case, there were no damaging storm effects to follow. The conference went on without a single hitch (at least none that anyone but a few staff members and I were privy to) and the inspiration of seeing the whole smart card community together and excited again made it worth all of the effort. I hope I am not the only one who walked away from the conference feeling the way I did.
This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with Charles Walton, EVP Payments, INSIDE Contactless. Charles is responsible for INSIDE’s Payments business, focused upon the global deployment of contactless and dual interface products. He is the Co-Chair of the Smart Card Alliance Contactless Payments Council, a frequent speaker within the industry, and has more than twelve years experience in the smart card sector. Prior to INSIDE Contactless, he was EVP & COO for Diversinet, a Toronto- headquartered mobile security company. As the founder of Caradas, a Boston-based smart card middleware company, he successfully delivered to organizations such as Visa, Target, and Bank of America, prior to the sale of Caradas to Diversinet in 2003. As well, he was the co-founder of the CyberTrust business at GTE and instrumental in capturing key first contract wins with MasterCard and American Express, and in Japan through the CyberTrust Japan joint venture
RF-Enabled Applications and Technology: Comparing and Contrasting RFID and RF-Enabled Smart Cards Many applications are now using radio frequency (RF) technology to automatically identify objects or verify the identity of people. These RF-enabled applications range from tracking animals and tagging goods for inventory control to enabling secure payment and identification. While these applications all use radio waves to communicate information, the RF technology used for each has different operational parameters, frequencies, read ranges and capabilities to support security and privacy features. For example:
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RFID tags and labels are used to add value in manufacturing, shipping and object-related tracking. They operate over short to long ranges (e.g., from inches to 25 feet), were designed for that purpose alone and have minimal built-in support for security and privacy.
RF-enabled smart cards,
Executive Director's Letter
