There were some notable deployments, such as Microsoft using our Cryptoflex .NET cards for its own internal IT security. There was also some respectable volume–Axalto alone has now shipped more than six million smart cards to the Department of Defense CAC card program for example.

What I found exciting though is the way all of the factors for the growth of convergence are aligning. It’s like the start of a “perfect storm.”

To start with, we had a steady stream of data security incidents, resulting in the theft of millions of consumers’ personal financial records. These fraudulent incidents had many causes and methods, but many capitalized on a central weakness of existing systems: the lack of adequate IT security protections. Fraudulent activity in turn has driven regulatory pressure on companies in many countries to implement better systems for protecting data, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Sarbanes-Oxley Acts in the US. These factors are all making the business case for introducing smart cards into IT applications for security purposes.

At the same time, the technologies involved have matured. Over the past few decades, many enterprises have spent large amounts of money to deploy physical access control systems utilizing RFID or magnetic stripe technologies. Yet few would disagree that contact-based microprocessor smart cards are by far the best for IT applications. As has been proven in large scale deployments around the world, the technology is super-secure, highly flexible, and increasingly affordable. Standards for digital IDs have become well established, even for advanced capabilities like PKI, web services and federated identities.

And the products keep moving ahead. Our company, for example, introduced a broad range of interoperable smart card form factor solutions in 2005 called Protiva. It brings new options like one-time passwords and USB connectivity that are perfectly suited for a flexible, smart card-based identity management platform that meets the varying needs of users within an organization. These features will significantly reduce implementation costs and increase convenience, further accelerating adoption of the technology.

In my view, we’ll look back and say the trend toward convergence started in 2005. With the pressure to do something getting stronger and the solutions getting ever easier to implement, now the convergence trend will accelerate. I expect the market demand for strong authentication with smart cards will continue to build, for the benefit of all.

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