Smart cards
Smart cards1. Technology Requirements of a Smart Card
What is a Smart Card?
Before I outline the technology requirements of the project, I think it is helpful to define what exactly a smart card is. The actual term smart card comes from France. It was during a period of national investment and modernisation in France during the 1970's which led to the development of the Carte a Memoire. This was later renamed by the governments marketing department equivalent (the Intelimatique) as the smart card. Although sometimes referred to as a chip card or an integrated circuit card, for purposes of this report I will refer to the device as a smart card. Smart Card Forum (1996).
The card itself tends to be similar in size to today's plastic payment card, except it has an actual silicon computer chip embedded in it. A small gold or silver contact connected to the chip inside the card is usually visible on the surface. This allows it to be programmed with a much more sophisticated range of information than say magnetic strip cards, which can only hold basic numerical data such as an account number. Smart Card Forum (1996).
Types of Smart Card
There are also different types of smart cards, as outlined by the Estonian Institute of Cybernetics (1995)
i) An intelligent smart card contains a central processing unit - a CPU- that actually has the ability not only to store and secure information, but to make decisions as required. Because intelligent cards offer a "read/write" capability, new information can be added and processed. Different types of applications can be supported and will allow for new applications to be added to it. It will also maintain security "firewalls" between them. This type of card, for example, has already been adopted by 60,000 staff and students at the University of Michigan, making use of both a chip and magnetic stripe. Their cards contain a number of features such as personal identification, dormitory security, banking details and library services.
ii) The second type of card is often called a memory card. Memory cards are primarily information storage cards that contain a stored value which the user can "spend". These cards may be used in a pay phone for example and are more likely to be used and thrown away after a duration of time.
In addition, each of these cards can be used in two different ways. One is in which the card is read by inserting it in a special reader. These are known as proximity cards. The second is a remote card which can be read from a distance, such as at a toll booth as you may expect to find on a...
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