G&D to supply smart cards to SEN

MUNICH, GERMANY: Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), provider of smart card-based solutions for telecommunications,

electronic payment, healthcare, ID, transportation, and IT security (PKI), announced that it would supply smart cards and cryptographic USB tokens, from its StarSign product family, to Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN), a provider of unified communications technologies and security consulting services and solutions.

The companies would soon offer company ID and identity solutions in a global co-operation model.

Kai Grassie, head, new business, G&D, said: "In developing the StarSign family, we have created highly secure and flexible identification solutions for company networks. The partnership with SEN will now enable us to offer these solutions to a much wider market."

Franz-Josef Nölke, solution line manager, SEN, said: "The G&D products will extend our security systems integration business and thus complement our current portfolio. Our identity and privacy solutions help customers to implement the latest requirements in secure and reliable unified-communications and IT architectures in an efficient and targeted manner."

Until now, SEN had used smart cards featuring Siemens' own operating system for use as company ID and signature cards. SEN would now also include StarSign products from G&D in its portfolio. The StarSign product series would offer a broad range of security tokens in a variety of form factors and for different operating systems.

The tokens could be incorporated in all standard IT systems and applications and provide reliable electronic proof of identity. The plan was to integrate the StarSign products into SEN's TISA (totally integrated security architecture) solution, which would help companies to align security solutions with their own business models.