OpenVMS Boot Camp 2015
 
The Smarts Behind Smart Cards

Track: Security & Compliance

Speaker
, Managing Editor, Availability Digest


Description
Lagging behind the rest of the world, the United States is finally scheduled to begin the adoption of smart cards. Smart cards are designed to end the fraudulent use of insecure magnetic-stripe cards by embedding a computer chip into the card. The computer chip provides encryption and risk-management functions to prevent card counterfeiting and to ensure secure transaction processing. In this presentation, we discuss how smart cards use public-key encryption to communicate securely with a POS terminal in order to prevent card skimming. The procedures for ensuring that the card is not a clone are presented as is the use of symmetric-key encryption to protect online transactions being authorized by the issuing bank. Since HP OpenVMS systems have a significant presence in the financial industry, it is important that the OpenVMS community be familiar with smart-card technology. With smart cards, major data thefts such as that suffered by Target during the year-end 2013 holiday season should become disasters of the past.

Experience Level
Intermediate