Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of The Record.
The networking and digital transformation of business processes is in full swing. This requires a large number of users – employees, business partners and customers – to have access to your company’s systems and applications. To ensure that business operations remain steady, IT systems must be sufficiently resilient, and it’s imperative that they be protected against malfunction and unauthorised access.
This often presents business travellers, and especially senior management, with a dilemma. Since the username and password combination is nowhere near sufficient these days, a company’s security policy requires secure two-factor authentication with smart cards. This is fine for a desktop in the office or with the smart card reader on your notebook, but it’s impractical for business trips. These procedures are then often abandoned, and as a result, security suffers. But let’s not forget that the highest level of security is necessary with sensitive information – regardless of where the user is and when they need to access their computer.
With its Virtual Smart Card, Charismathics provides a solution that offers the same level of security of a smart card but does not require an additional physical authenticator. It offers usability, additional security and value for money. Customers receive sophisticated technology and support for the latest Microsoft operating systems.
A true virtual smart card like that from Charismathics implements the full smart card stack, including a personal computer/smart card reader driver, smart card platform and applet or profile down to the protocol level. This ensures security, interoperability with existing applications and manageability.
It uses the built-in trusted platform module or Intel Software Guard Extensions on your PC to secure cryptographic keys and execute secure functions. Both support secure storage of cryptographic keys, secure execution of cryptography, and anti-hammering of the user PIN.
Support for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 comes as standard, and the solution is fully integrated with CSSI, Charismathics’ enterprise smart card middleware software.
It also offers support for the Windows Crypto API as well as the PKCS11 standard, for the widest possible application support.
All this is achieved with optimal cost of ownership – the Charismathics Virtual Smart Card lowers the cost of issuance, maintenance and replacement of credentials.