"The partnership is a fundamental step toward helping governments efficiently secure their borders by leveraging a proven ePassport solution that is not only reliable, but scalable," said Entrust Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bill Conner. "3M is an innovator in ePassport reader technology; Entrust has long been the champion of public key infrastructure, particularly for use in government and government-to-citizen environments. This is a natural partnership that will help global governments usher in the EAC standard in the coming years."
The Entrust-3M partnership was praised by Brussels Interoperability Group (BIG) chairman Bob Carter. BIG is a Technical Working Group established by the European Union (EU) "Article 6 Committee." The group's purpose is to resolve the problems of interoperability among electronic passports of EU and Schengen states for the European implementation of EAC.
"With national security a priority among governments in Europe and around the globe, it's exciting to see leaders in the ePassport and eID security space such as 3M and Entrust collaborating to provide interoperable security solutions," said Carter. "Such collaboration will be critical to the efficient rollout of border control systems to meet the EAC specifications."
BIG set the standard for EAC, which is the second generation of ePassports and allows governments to leverage a stronger biometric that is more difficult to impersonate on the RFID chip, typically a fingerprint or iris scan. EAC ePassports also require the encryption of the chip contents; even if a criminal has the ability to impersonate the enhanced biometric, access to the chip contents is denied with encryption.
Labeled as Phase 2, EAC requirements imply a significant jump in the
need for technical cooperation and interoperability between nations.
Entrust and 3M have mature underlying technology to provide stability and
scalability within this advanced ePasspor
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