Interview of Oyvind Rastad, Chairman of Eurosmart

“The expansion of smart security markets gives rise to new challenges, but especially new opportunitites.”

During the last few years, we’ve seen the frontiers of the Smart Security industry expanding to larger countries or continents: IoT, M2M, Cloud Computing, Mobile Security as a whole, and not just limited to SIM card, etc. Is this evolution raising new issues and challenges for Eurosmart?

Indeed, challenges, but especially opportunities to “advocate the use of Smart Security Devices, solutions and services to enhance the usability of digital services while protecting privacy and combatting fraud”. In our digital society, securing digital information and transactions is becoming an important and growing challenge for governments, businesses and individuals alike. But these challenges are matched by the degree of opportunity. The recent proposal from the European Commission for a regulation on e-Identification, e-Authentication and e-Signatures is another step forward towards removing existing barriers to Europe’s digital development, but Eurosmart stresses the vital nature of making smart secure devices a mandatory part of this regulation. This was highly successful for mobile telephony and for road safety with the tachograph systems deployment. It must be done again for electronic signature with e-Identification and eAuthentication. Our industry’s mission is to leverage our experience and expertise of over 20 years in security in order to respond to the needs of new sectors. In the mobile domain, for example,
we are already “beyond UICC,” with an offering that has expanded around the more generic concept of the secure element, along with that now of the TEE (Trusted Executive Environment), which allows for securing the keyboard and screen of the mobile, and is highly complementary to those features offered by the secure element.

Download the complete interview of Oyvind Rastad, Eurosmart

Yvon Avenel, Smart Cards Trends (July 2012)