Smart Card Activities ...

From National Institute of Standards and Technology, TESTIMONY by Ben Wu before The Committee on Veterans Affairs, October 6, 2004 ...

... "Smart cards provide opportunities for improving security of our critical infrastructure, both from a physical and logical perspective. Because they are capable of performing cryptographic functions, they can perform important security services such as securely storing digital signatures, holding public key credentials, and authenticating a claimed identity based on biometric data. As such, smart cards are a crucial element in a range of current and expected critical applications and programs. They are also the underlying foundation for the standard required by Hspd-12. NIST's smart card program dates back to 1988. Recognizing the potential for smart cards to improve the security of Federal IT systems and our national information infrastructure, NIST chose to invest significant research effort in smart card technology at an early stage. The NIST smart card program produced many early innovations in the area such as a generic authentication interface for smart cards, the first cards to implement the Data Encryption Algorithm and the Digital Signature Algorithm, and the first reprogrammable smart card. These innovations are integral to modern smart cards." ...