HID Corp.: iClass CP400 Smart Card Programmer.
www.hidcorp.com, Hardware HID Corp., a manufacturer of contactless access control cards and readers, has released the iCLASS CP400 Contactless Smart Card Programmer. The latest addition to the company's iCLASS 13.56 MHz contactless smart card technology product line enables programming of security-based applications and card management functions. HID's...

Gemplus Narrows Loss but Profitability Proves Elusive.
Gemplus International SA, the world's largest smart card vendor, still shows no sign of returning to profitability, despite the fact that it narrowed its loss in the second quarter. Revenue for the quarter fell nearly 18%, and the company has not recorded a profit for nearly two...

Physical and cyber security leaders form security management group.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. Four leading security solutions providers today announced the formation of the Open Security Exchange, a collaborative group that is defining best practices and promoting vendor-neutral specifications for integrating the management of security devices and policies across the enterprise. By promoting more effective exchange of enterprise-wide security...

EU DIGITAL SIGNATURE PROPOSAL FAILS.
The European Union proposal to give digital signatures legal recognition across all member states reached an impasse on Friday, when a small cluster of countries maintained that only digital signatures generated - effectively - by smart card technology should stand up in court. The agreement faltered over the level...

DE LA RUE SELLS TERMINAL BUSINESS TO INGENICO.
De La Rue Plc, the struggling UK bank note printing and smart card company, has sold its loss-making terminals business to Ingenico SA, in a 9.5m-pound deal which will give it a 4.41% stake in Ingenico. When the deal was first discussed in July of this year, De La...

SMART CARDS ONLY BRIGHT SPOT FOR DE LA RUE.
De La Rue International Plc, the UK banknote printer which has repositioned itself as a 'cash-to-cards' company, has invested 10m pounds this year alone in smart card technology and sales in its card system division climbed 26.1% to 76.8m pounds in the six months to September 30. This was...

MICROSOFT TO SLASH SMART CARD PRICES WITH NEW OS.
Microsoft Corp has plunged into the smart card market with an operating systems that will compete with existing systems such as MultOS and Java Card. Microsoft has already won backing from leading smart card vendors Schlumberger Electronic Transactions and Gemplus Associates International. A beta version is due to be...

Global contest nets encryption standard.
For 3 years, a digital demolition derby pitted teams of cryptographers against each other in a fierce battle of different schemes for protecting information from prying eyes. Now, there is only one survivor: a data-scrambling technique called Rijndael (pronounced RHINE-doll). The name is patched together from those...

Motorola and ERG Win Second Smart Card Fare System Deal.
ERG Ltd and Motorola Inc's Worldwide Smartcard Solutions Division have won a $78m contract to supply an integrated smart card fare collection system for the public transport network of Singapore. The Land Transport Authority of Singapore awarded the contract for the Enhanced Integrated Fare System to the ERG/Motorola alliance...

GSA Starts Smart Card Pilot, Awards Millennia Contracts.
IBM Corp is to set up a pilot smart card scheme for the US Government's General Services Administration purchasing agency, in a rare sign of life for the smart card industry outside of Europe. The GSA will include 450 employees in the tests, using smart cards for security identity...