Entrust Credentialing Services, Smartcards Earn Microsoft Certification
The Entrust Inc. credentialing services and related smartcard technology have earned full Microsoft Certification for demonstrating hardware compatibility with the company's line of operating systems.
This ensures that the smartcards deployed with Entrust's software-as-a-service credentialing platform are compliant with Microsoft Windows, as well as the many applications running on the operating system that use certificate authentication.
"With the achievement of the Microsoft hardware certification, Entrust's smartcard platform and related services continue to gain momentum in a critical security space that helps vet and authenticate invaluable digital identities," said Entrust president and chief executive officer Bill Conner. "Our customers and sales channels are now ensured our credentialing solutions are compatible with their environments as we help them develop and deploy multipurpose smartcard technology."
With the certification complete, Entrust smartcard documentation and collateral will be licensed to display recognizable Microsoft compatibility logos for the Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. This certification, which applies to 32- and 64-bit operating systems, adds another level of interoperability to Entrust Credentialing Services, ensuring compatibility for hundreds of third-party certificate authentication applications.
Entrust smartcards, related drivers and components — specifically the Entrust IdentityGuard X509 Minidriver — completed a comprehensive number of use-cases and a thorough submission process to earn the certification. The procedure featured an exhaustive test of the proper smartcards, drivers and various aspects of Entrust's card management capabilities.
"This certification is further testament to our customer-centric focus and desire to simplify deployment, implementation and issuance of multipurpose credentialing projects to appropriately authenticate user identities," said Conner.
Entrust's certified smartcard chip runs on the Java Card operating system and is faster and also has EAL5+ certification and is FIPS 140-2-compliant.
Comprehensive physical and logical access is secured by the use of digital certificates, PKI and an authentication platform. Entrust's solution produces and manages a single unified identity credential for each person associated with an enterprise, government agency or citizen population.
Entrust Credentialing Services leverages its authentication platform, Entrust IdentityGuard, to deploy effective smartcard management alongside an array of alternate soft- and hard-form factor authenticators. The solution stands alone in the ability to tightly couple card management with either on-premise or managed service public key infrastructure.
Entrust IdentityGuard also personalizes the physical and logical access electronics on smartcards for end-users. This provides tighter integration during certificate issuance with Entrust or Microsoft certificate authorities. This approach enables a single platform to issue and manage digital certificates that are deployed, on smartcards or USBs, and distributed to end-users.