At this time of the year, it is time to look in the rear view mirror and try to sort out the most important events of the past year. Sixteen months were needed between the original announcement of the acquisition of Gemalto by Thales and its completion. This change has probably frozen the structure of the leaders in the secure transactions industry for a while. However, the activities of each of these players may evolve. Thales announced as a part of the Gemalto acquisition process that its ambition was to become a world leader in cybersecurity, which implicitly implies a disengagement from the least profitable segments of the smart card activities, namely SIM cards and potentially to a less
We all know the quote of Richard Clarke, former US National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism: “If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.” Nowadays, many publications about cybersecurity issues are bringing us data to substantiate this saying. For instance, recently published statistics show that hackers attack every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day (source: University of Maryland) and data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019 (source: RiskBased Security). Detection and reaction remain a central issue, demonstrates a report published by the Ponemon inst
The Paris-based EESTEL association regularly organizes meetings that provide a place for experts in a given technology field to talk, exchange ideas and build common knowledge about the secure transactions industry. This month, the association talks revolved around open loop payments in transport. Open loop consists in getting rid of the fare media in mass transit systems and to use contactless EMV cards, or apps such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, to complete payments. The rationale is that a transport operator is just a merchant like any other, and traveling on a subway, tram or bus is just making a small amount payment. Actually, the devil is in the details: open payment means building up a
During Trustech, conferences covered various aspects of the complex relations between identity and banking services. During the conference titled “Banking IDs and Financial Authentication,” speakers from leading financial institutions, Société Générale and BBVA, gave their vison about the global needs for a smoother yet secure authentication process. The ability to prove that you are who you say you are is a fundamental piece of economic, financial and social development; as of now, over 1.1 billion people in the world are still deprived from this right according to the World Bank. While national IDs have exited for over a century, private sector IDs are more recent, and the essential evolut
