On the 17th of March, The European Commission tabled a proposal for a regulation to improve the security features of EU citizens identity cards and residence cards with the aim at curbing document fraud.
Eurosmart and its members are fully committed in achieving the highest level of trust and security in particular in the fields of physical and digital ID documents. The Digital Security Industry welcomes the European Commission’s proposal to set common security standards across the EU in the line with the ICAO requirements, and stresses the fact that facial and fingerprints data stored on a certified secure element, remains the best option to prevent bad uses and falsifications.

In early April 2018, GlobalPlatform announced in a Security Informative Note that the latest version of the Card Specification (v2.3.1) will set SCP02 as a deprecated feature. Eurosmart is committed in developing, promoting and maintaining the appropriate security level for its products, solutions and protocols and welcomes Global Platform’s initiative. Eurosmart specifies that, for a long time, the digital security industry has been added additional security measures to SCO02. The Eurosmart members are used to systematically pre-encrypting sensitive data or restricting the usage only to trusted environments.
Stefane Mouille, President of Eurosmart explains: “Once again, the situation proves the good anticipation of our industry with regards to the security erosion of SCP02 and continues to favour a smooth transition to SCP03”.

eurosmart.com

The Smart Payment Association (SPA) announced at 4th April that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation with NXP® Semiconductors. NXP Semiconductors becomes a Market Monitoring Advisory Council Member of SPA, the trade body of the smart payment technology providers.

"Cyber-Sicherheit gehört in die Chefetage" lautet der Appell, für den sich das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen und das Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) zukünftig verstärkt gemeinsam einsetzen wollen. Dazu unterzeichneten BSI-Präsident Arne Schönbohm und der nordrhein-westfälische Wirtschafts- und Digitalminister Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart eine Absichtserklärung zur engeren Zusammenarbeit in Fragen der IT-Sicherheit. Zudem tritt das Land NRW, vertreten durch das Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Innovation, Digitales und Entwicklung, der Allianz für Cyber-Sicherheit bei, um so auch die nordrhein-westfälischen Unternehmen verstärkt für die Bedeutung der Informationssicherheit zu sensibilisieren.

The proposal for a Cybersecurity Act is a matter of European industrial policy and economic growth as well as being of importance for European digital sovereignty and societal choices.
The level of resistance to potential attacks on European encryption solutions will be key to the technical transposition of articles 7 and 8 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Savvi, used to test the connection between payment terminals and network systems, already supported EMV^® L3 testing in-line with the guidelines of individual payment systems. This latest qualification accommodates the most recent efforts of EMVCo to align, streamline and standardize this testing process across multiple payment brands.