Smart Cards Essay

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SMART CARDS INTRODUCTION A smart card, typically a type of chip card, is a plastic card that contains an embedded computer chip–either a memory or microprocessor type–that stores and transacts data. This data is usually associated with either value, information, or both and is stored and processed within the card's chip. The card data is transacted via a reader that is part of a computing system. Systems that are enhanced with smart cards are in use today throughout several key applications, including healthcare, banking, entertainment, and transportation. All applications can benefit from the added features and security that smart cards provide. Why Smart Cards?? Smart cards improve the convenience and security of any transaction. They provide tamper-proof storage of user and account identity. Smart card systems have proven to be more reliable than other machine-readable cards, like magnetic stripe and barcode, with many studies showing card read life and reader life improvements demonstrating much lower cost of system maintenance. Smart cards also provide vital components of system security for the exchange of data throughout virtually any type of network. They protect against a full range of security threats, from careless storage of user passwords to sophisticated system hacks. The costs to manage password resets for an organization or enterprise are very high, thus making smart cards a cost-effective solution in these environments. Multifunction cards can also be used to manage network system access and store value and other data. Worldwide, people are now using smart cards for a wide variety of daily tasks, which include: HISTORY In 1968 German electrical engineer Helmut Gröttrup and his colleague Jürgen Dethloff invented the automated chip card, receiving a patent only in 1982, while working for German company Giesecke & Devrient. The first mass

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