Entrust confirms Taiwan ePassport role

 

Entrust has confirmed it will provide its public key infrastructure (PKI) to the Taiwanese government to help authenticate sensitive biometric information stored on ePassports, which will be available to nearly 23 million citizens by the end of 2008.

The PKI will be used to protect the integrity and validity of personal data such as digitised information and photograph visa Entrust digital signatures for Basic Access Control (BAC).

"The PKI technology leveraged in this specific deployment addresses the needs of the Taiwanese government today, but also provides the ability to migrate to second-generation ePassport solutions as their requirements and border security needs evolve,” says Bill Conner, Entrust chairman, president and chief executive officer.

Initial ePassport projects typically standardise on BAC, which features passive and optional active authentication and is in production in Europe and many parts of the world. Entrust provides BAC ePassport security for a number of governments, including the US, UK, Slovenia, Singapore, New Zealand and now Taiwan.

The Entrust Authority PKI portfolio is built on the foundation of Entrust Authority Security Manager, the certification authority (CA) system responsible for issuing and managing users’ digital identities. Entrust says: “Optional components help organisations manage the entire lifecycle of PKI certificates.