News
G&D Supplies Europe’s First Electronic Passports Featuring the New SAC Protocol to the Republic of Kosovo
May 2013 by Marc Jacob
Giesecke & Devrient has been chosen by the Republic of Kosovo to supply the latest generation of electronic passports for the next three years. In addition to the total order of 800,000 of these passports, G&D is supplying a state-of-the-art system solution to personalize them. Altogether this turnkey solution utilizes the latest security technologies, which will allow the Republic of Kosovo to protect the identity of its citizens even better in future. By deciding to adopt the new passports, the Republic of Kosovo is setting a new standard in Europe: these passports are the first to feature Supplemental Access Control (SAC), the new digital access protocol that all new European travel documents issued from December 2014 are obliged to support.
The first of the new passports are scheduled to be issued to Kosovo’s Ministry of Internal Affairs just four weeks following signing of the agreement. Each passport will contain a contactless microprocessor storing its owner’s personal and biometric data, as well as a representation of the individual’s fingerprints. The Extended Access Control (EAC) protocol protects these data against any unauthorized access.
“By implementing STARCOS® 3.5 – our operating system designed specifically for biometric passports – we are supplying the Republic of Kosovo with Europe’s most up-to-date electronic passport solution,” says Hans Wolfgang Kunz, Head of the Government Solutions business unit at G&D. “The new generation of passports gives the Republic of Kosovo a form of travel document that is both highly secure and future-proof.”
The solution is based on G&D’s leading high-performance STARCOS 3.5 operating system – the only operating system in the world today that is security-certified to handle both PACE and EAC.
Kosovo’s next-generation passports are the first European ID documents to feature the new Supplemental Access Control (SAC) digital protocol. SAC is based on the PACE (Password Authenticated Connection Establishment) cryptographic protocol and is counted among the most secure technologies currently available. From December 2014, all travel documents issued by EU countries will be required to support the SAC protocol.
Another new feature of these passports is that they will be the world’s first to have a Card Access Number (CAN) printed on them. Scanning or manually entering the CAN enables the tap-proof PACE protocol to access data stored on the document. This process makes it easier to maintain security levels in the mobile reading of biometric data, for example using portable identity verification readers. And with the help of the CAN and an NFC-enabled smartphone equipped with the required ID app, citizens will be able to check the accuracy of the data stored on their own passports.
