SMARTRAC’s ePassport production plant in Thailand has received a site certificate from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). This supports product certifications conforming to Common Criteria Part3 up to the assurance level EAL 5+.

The site certificate covers the production environment and processes for personal electronic identification (eID) products, especially RFID inlays for ePassports and contactless national ID cards. It also includes the initialisation environment for eID, and SMARTRAC says it is the first inlay manufacturer obtaining security certification for both capabilities.

“Customers throughout the value chain benefit from increased flexibility and cost savings as they are now enabled to include the SMATRAC certificate in their own product certificates at little to no additional cost and effort,” claims SMARTRAC. “In addition, making use of the SMARTRAC certificate results in reduced complexity and time savings and therefore much quicker time to market, as already proven by various de-facto standard ePassport operating systems from different vendors.

Product certificates from the BSI are accepted in all countries following the Common Criteria specifications.

SMARTRAC says it already runs a network of high security production facilities in Asia, Europe and the US which comply with different security standards. The company is also planning to equip further production facilities with site certificates and increase the certification grade of existing ones.