Smart Card Alliance Educational Institute Courses

The Smart Card Alliance Educational Institute develops and conducts educational courses to provide objective and timely information on smart cards, related technologies, and smart card-enabled applications to Alliance members and the public, including private industry, government, and the public sector. The Educational Institute offers both online and classroom-based courses covering smart card technology and applications.

The Educational Institute’s industry-renowned classroom programs feature expert speakers to provide participants with a solid understanding of smart card technology, standards and applications. Courses are held in conjunction with Alliance or other industry events. The Educational Institute offers two classroom-based courses, EI 101 Smart Card Introductory Course and EI 201 Advanced Smart Card Business Solutions Course, and topical workshops. The EI 201 course expands on the content of the EI 101 course and covers critical business issues based on specific markets and applications of the technology. Check the Smart Card Alliance conference schedule for the next EI classroom-based course and workshop offering.

The Educational Institute also offers customized courses and workshops for specific industries at Alliance and industry events.

Fundamentals of Smart Cards Online Course

This online course provides a thorough overview of the state of the smart card industry, the basic components of smart card technology and the applications used throughout the global marketplace. The course covers a broad array of topics from why people are moving to smart cards to how the basic structure of smart card architecture is formed and utilized.

• Click here to learn more about the online course.

EI 101 Smart Card Introductory Course

The Educational Institute Smart Card Introductory Course is intended to enable participants to learn the basics of smart card technologies and to effectively apply those basics in a business environment. Topics include:

• Why Smart Cards?: Covering why smart card technology and related applications are important to business.

• Introducing Smart Card Technologies: Covering the basics of smart card technology, other emerging technologies that are affecting the nature and functions of smart cards internationally, and key players in the smart card industry.

• Standards, Specifications and Interoperability: Covering existing and emerging specifications and standards used to promote interoperability of smart card systems.

• Contactless Smart Card Technology: Covering an overview of the technologies and applications involving contactless smart cards, including a review of the various specifications and capabilities of different types of contactless cards and the markets in which they are used.

• B SKY B - A Case Study: Exploring a real-life example of a smart card implementation by a UK premium video delivery service company and the lessons learned. The case study highlights the issues of widespread distribution and value of a sound upfront security design.

• Smart Card Security & System Integrity: Covering basic security terms and definitions and how they apply to smart cards, the ways in which smart cards and their components are vulnerable to breaches of security, the principal safeguards to protection of smart card and system integrity, and alternatives for establishing and maintaining smart card security and system integrity through risk management.

• Smart Card Markets and Trends: Covering the characteristics of the current marketplace, consumer and merchant demand, and business issues associated with multiple application cards within the North American marketplace.

• Legal & Public Policy Issues Relating to Smart Cards: Covering the major global policy and regulatory issues surrounding smart card applications, such as privacy, security, fraud, consumer disclosure and governmental involvement, and the principal security systems available to address these concerns and issues.

EI 201 Advanced Smart Card Business Solutions Course

• Smart Card Standards 201: Covering an overview of existing smart card standards and how they fit together. The session explains what is behind the intent of each of the principal standards and how they are to be used by applications. This module gives the audience a good business overview of existing and stable standards available for smart cards. It provides business decision makers the technical elements for stability on which they can build but also to point out the main roadblocks where interoperability is still in question.

• Business Cases on Smart Cards: Covering several smart card implementations and providing participants with information about successful deployments to help them determine the business case drivers for success. Participants will learn what the decision makers’ criteria for utilizing a smart card business system solution were, understand the dimensions and variables of the business case for several applications, and be able to discuss whether or not smart cards were appropriate to their business needs.

• Mobile eCommerce: Covering both the technologies and markets involved in mobile eCommerce. In addition, participants learn the role of smart card technology in mobile eCommerce, and the benefits they bring to such services. The session closes with an analysis of mobile eCommerce market drivers, and a review of applications running in worldwide markets.

• Advances in Contactless Technology: Covering contactless card and system technology and the drivers and benefits to government and enterprise access security organizations and transportation smart card applications (e.g., parking, fare collection). The session will also examine and compare competing technologies and look at examples of real world implementations.

• Personalization and Card Issuance: Focusing on a critical step in the launch of any smart card program–the delivery of a personalized smart card into the hands of the end-user–and an examination of the post-personalization capability brought about by the emergence of true multi-application smart cards. The session includes an overview of the smart card personalization process and terminology–including data generation, key management, card management, application management, production management and post-issuance management–and an overview of emerging standards that simplify and streamline the overall process.

• Smart Card Implementation: Managing the Project: Covering a sample implementation of a smart card project. The session analyzes the value proposition and ROI for a project, defines its goals and objectives, and develops the project architecture. After those planning issues have been presented, the session discusses project management roles and responsibilities, deployment management, training and field support requirements; it concludes with a cost/benefit analysis of the entire project.

• Biometrics and PKI: Covering an overview of biometrics and PKI. Different biometric technologies are presented and their individual advantages and drawbacks discussed. Examples of current commercial products are given. The concepts of public key infrastructure (PKI) are introduced along with its system aspects and trust models. PKI requirements that a smart card must fulfill are also covered and the challenges of a “secure computing environment” are discussed. The participants will be presented with the principles of “trusted computing base” as applied to a model application where biometric based user identification is used to enable the PKI-related functionality on a smart card.