• Axalto to Combat European Road Safety Violations
• IBM Receives Two Industry Awards
• SAGEM Doubles its Market Share in Europe
• RFID To Track Medical Waste
• Advanced Acquires PetNet
• Accu-Sort Installs 4th RFID Airport Security Sortation System
• Atos Origin Successfully Secured the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games
• Arab Bank Chooses Level Four Sortware for ATM Network

Axalto to Combat European Road Safety Violations

Axalto has announced it has been selected by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water management, and Luxembourg Ministry of Transport to integrate its smart card technology into digital tachograph cards that will be available shortly to road transport professionals. This highly secure technological solution will not only combat road safety violations but also enable efficient fleet management by European hauling companies. Benefits include real-time information on driver activity, accurate planning for journey times, reliable recording and output of driving time and speed, as well as a reduction in administration operational costs.

The digital tachograph, also implemented in France and Spain, has been developed as part of a European road safety project. In compliance with the European Commission legislation, it will be mandatory in all 25 member states in 2004 for all truck and bus drivers to be equipped with electronic tachographs. A wider range of countries - including Norway, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey - is expected to comply with this legislation by 2009, making the total number of vehicles which will be equipped with an electronic tachograph to be numbered in tens of millions.

IBM Receives Two Industry Awards

Frost & Sullivan has presented International Business Machines (IBM) with the 2004 Frost & Sullivan Business Development Award and Competitive Strategy Award. This was presented for IBM's outstanding positioning in the Smart Card value chain and the exceptional performance of its JCOP Java operating system, While the Business Development Strategy Award commends IBM's superior service offerings and consistently expanding customer base throughout 2003, the Competitive Strategy Award highlights IBM's increasing market penetration based on its strong product offerings, primarily its JCOP operating system. Within the payment segment of the Smart Card market, IBM's comprehensive solutions package (covering hardware, software and services), aims to facilitate migration to the Europay/MasterCard/VISA (EMV) standard. A range of consulting services is geared to help organisations synergise migration plans with business objectives.

SAGEM Doubles its Market Share in Europe

According to the latest results published by Gartner Inc., SAGEM's, a provider of Mobile phones, security electronics and fingerprint biometrics solutions, has achieved an increase in its share of the mobile phone market in Western Europe of 5.3% in the second quarter 2004.These figures place SAGEM amongst the top six players in the mobile phones market in this region.

RFID To Track Medical Waste

Medical waste is an increasing issue. The U.S. sends some 2 million tons of medical waste to incinerators and landfills each year. And Japan's Environment Ministry estimated last year that more than 11 million cubic meters of industrial waste had been illegally dumped around the country. Medical waste represents only a tiny fraction of that sum, but it is of particular concern because of potential health problems. Recent revisions to Japanese waste disposal regulations now make originators of waste, in this case hospitals, culpable in illegal dumping cases.

To tackle this problem Kureha Environmental Engineering Co. Ltd., a waste management company, and IBM have teamed up to track medical waste as it leaves hospitals. Testing will begin on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to ensure that medical waste reaches its proper disposal point. IBM Japan's RFID Solution Center in Yamato, Japan, will collaborate in the test.

During the trials the cardboard or plastic containers that hold the waste will be outfitted with RFID tags. Intensive testing at the Yamato facility will examine how well these tags transmit information in a variety of situations. After those trials are completed, testing will move on to Kureha Environmental Engineering's waste processing site. Once the effectiveness of RFID tagging is confirmed, the company plans to equip Kureha General Hospital, in Fukushima, Japan, with the RFID technology to track its discarded medical waste. This is the first study in Asia Pacific of tracking medical waste and represents a new application for RFID. A lot of attention has focused on the use of RFID to track consumer products coming into stores. RFID also represents an option for tracking pharmaceutical products from factory to patient.

Advanced Acquires PetNet

Advanced ID Corporation, a provider of radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions, has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, AVID Canada Corporation, acquired the PetNet Recovery Database of petowners microchipped prior to January 1st, 2003 from Anitech Identification Systems Inc. As a result of this acquisition, AVID Canada will have the most robust and largest database in Canada with nearly one million registered pet owners. In addition, AVID Canada and PetNet have agreed to work towards establishing a national pet recovery service, a goal of animal and veterinary associations for several years. AVID Canada and PetNet are the only two providers of an approved Canadian standard microchip known as FECAVA.

Accu-Sort Installs 4th RFID Airport Security Sortation System

Accu-Sort Systems has announced it has installed its fourth RFID airport baggage sortation system, used for high-risk passenger luggage screening. Enhanced screening of high-risk passengers has become an imperative since 9/11. However, traditional baggage identification technologies do not guarantee that the right bags are sorted to the right locations without human intervention. This lack of 100% reading of tags is not acceptable when airports need to guarantee the tracking and inspection of high-risk passenger luggage. RFID for sortation systems developed by Accu-Sort help ensure 100% read rate. ASI solves the problem of six-sided RFID identification by using a 4-antennae tunnel.

Atos Origin Successfully Secured the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games

Atos Origin, the Worldwide Information Technology (IT) Partner of the International Olympic Committee, has announced that the security solution built into the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games IT infrastructure prevented any attacks from viruses and hackers ensuring that there was no disruption and that the results were relayed to the world and to the media in Athens accurately and in real-time. During the 16 days of competition, more than five million security alerts to the Games IT systems were recorded, of which just 425 were serious and 20 critical. Intrusions included accredited people attempting to disconnect INFO 2004, the Olympic Games intranet that provides results, schedule and athlete information, in order to connect personal laptops to access the Internet. The IT team was able to respond fast to all the critical alerts and prevent unauthorised access.

Arab Bank Chooses Level Four Sortware for ATM Network

Level Four Software, a provider of ATM test and development software, has announced that Arab National Bank (ANB) is licensing its ATM Channel Development Suite, in order to deploy new ATM functionality more quickly and to ensure the delivery of high-availability service to its customers. ANB is one of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's leading commercial banks and is Level Four's third new customer in the region this year. ANB will deploy a range of tools from Level Four's ATM Channel Development suite to support the development of new functionality across its multi-vendor network of 300 ATMs throughout the Kingdom. These include core testing products ATM Developer and ATM Simulator, with additional modules EMV FastTrack, 3DES FastTrack, ATM Reporter and Load Group Manager.

The bank's migration to international mandates for increased security such as Europay Mastercard Visa (EMV), Triple DES and remote key management will be aided by Level Four's EMV FastTrack and 3DES FastTrack. EMV FastTrack addresses the complexity of smart cards and enables the testing of EMV-ready ATM downloads. It will enable the bank to fully automate testing direct from the card, tracing the transactions through the ATM and the ACI BASE24 host system.

- MORE -

From time to time, this news service may include industry forecasts and forward looking statements made by the companies concerned. Readers should be advised that Smart Card News Ltd cannot be held responsible for decisions and/or actions taken by readers of our news service, based on the information provided.

This news is only to be distributed to persons/companies who have a contract with Smart Card News Ltd. Unless your company has gained a licence and/or written permission from Smart Card News, the contents of this news page are not to be forwarded to any other person or server. Any replication by any means without prior permission is illegal and action may be taken.

If you recieve this online news from a forwarded source please contact the team at Smart Card News Ltd. It is illegal to replicate this online news. Please contact info@smartcard.co.uk