IDmachines CEO Salvatore D’Agostino quoted on importance of using FIPS 201

Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 13, 2009 – In the recent February cover story Security Magazine, http://www.securitymagazine.com/Articles chose to focus on the continued evolution of convergence seeking industry experts to give their opinions, including Salvatore D’Agostino. In the article Mr. D’Agostino points out the need to leverage Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201) as the best decision that an organization can make when trying to achieve the benefits of converged security and multipurpose identity.

Salvatore D’Agostino, Secretary of the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) Identity Council Steering Committee repeated his and the organization’s belief that standards based strong identity credential and in particular FIPS 201 meets the needs for enterprise credential. Mr. D’Agostino is a strong advocate of FIPS 201 for moving industry forward to the next level of multi-use and convergence. FIPS 201 provides a basis for interoperability and trust in addition to high assurance and multi-use.

Salvatore D’Agostino points out that “I don’t think the full story is out on the economic benefits of using a common credential for most or all access transactions. There isn’t enough experience to document the benefits, but they are obvious. Stronger security, reduced fraud, reduced administrative costs, better protection of personal information and privacy, elimination of multiple credentials and the associated cost; it’s a long list of benefits and cost savings. Simply there is a call for the migration to better security. FIPS 201 achieves this from both a policy and a technology perspective.”

D’Agostino continues “It’s important to realize that even though it’s seen mostly in smart cards in government today it won’t be long before the technology moves across industries. It is already taking place in the aerospace, education and bio-pharma sectors. It won’t be long before phones become the common authentication device at which point the cross over to the consumer and small scale applications can take place. Billions of dollars and a decade of effort have put a sound footing in place. In the future FIPS 201 and certificates will include people and devices, as well as other systems such as HVAC, SCADA and transportation.”

About IDmachines LLC

IDmachines helps customers to accelerate the use of credentials and identity infrastructure. With a specialization in converged security, IDmachines provides immediate solutions on how to register, enroll, issue and use most types of contact, contactless and other tokens and in particular Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201) compatible and interoperable multi-use credentials. IDmachines makes real converged access control and other enterprise uses of 21st century ID.

Salvatore D’Agostino blogs on identity infrastructure at http://idmachines.blogspot.com

Contact:

Salvatore D’Agostino
IDmachines LLC
4 Lamson Place
Cambridge, MA 02139
+1 617.201.4809
sal@idmachines.com
http://idmachines.blogspot.com