Microsoft handed out preview releases of its Smart Card for Windows software at the CardTech/SecureTech conference earlier this year. That sets the stage for Microsoftís challenge to two operating systems vying to be the standard for the smart card industry, which many at the conference said is finally ready to take off.
Microsoft held a number of technical sessions at the conference to tell software developers how to use its smart card for Windows technology, which will be formally unveiled this summer. The technology is designed to leverage Microsoftís huge development environment and to make a compact version of Windows a primary part of the growing infrastructure for smart cards.
Smart Card for Windows will challenge JavaCard from Sun Microsystems and Multos from Maosco, a consortium that includes MasterCard, American Express, Fujitsu, and other major corporations. All three Operating Systems make it possible to put several application packages on an IC inside a smart card and to change those programs without any impact on other programs stored in the card.
"The most important thing is to keep the price down," said Mike Dusche, product manager for Microsoftís Smart Card for Windows. "Our software runs on an 8-bit chip, and the operating system can be configured to meet the needs of the issuer. Issuers can choose whether they want cryptography, or how many programs they want to put on a card. A small configuration will take 16 kilobytes and a large configuration with RSA [Rivest-Shamir-Adleman] cryptography will take around 28 KB. Most people will put that in ROM and use EEPROM or flash for application program space."
