Entrust Advances European EAC Movement With Release of SPOC ePassport Solution

DALLAS, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- A leader in the preparation and development of the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) standard for ePassports, Entrust Inc. announces the official availability of the Entrust SPOC ePassport solution. An important protocol developed by the European Union (EU) and the Brussels Interoperability Group (BIG), SPOC serves as the standardized mechanism for certificate management between countries for support of EAC-enabled ePassports.

"Entrust is a strong advocate of ePassport standards and has been a leader in delivery of commercial capabilities to support Extended Access Control-enabled (EAC) ePassports and their essential interoperability," said Brussels Interoperability Committee chairman Bob Carter. "SPOC is an absolutely necessary component for the efficient deployment of EAC in the EU. "The model enables countries to move forward in the adoption of EAC-enabled ePassports, while simplifying cross-jurisdiction certificate management for the inspection of these advanced passports at border security points."

Fully compliant with the SPOC specification, Entrust's SPOC implementation is deployable in isolation or as a component of the comprehensive Entrust ePassport solution. When integrated with Entrust's ePassport solution, the SPOC provides configurable options for manual, queued and automated processing of domestic and international certificate exchange and communication.

"The SPOC standard is a smart, forward-looking approach that will facilitate the efficient deployment of inter-country certificate exchange for the inspection of EAC-enabled ePassports," said Entrust President and CEO Bill Conner. "Entrust is proud of its leadership position in the development and growth of the SPOC standard. Dedicated SPOC solutions help government agencies adopt EAC-enabled ePassports — and potentially other eCitizen applications — requiring advanced cross-border validation."

In October 2009, Entrust led a critical initiative to provide the security community with an online interoperability and demonstration site that enabled countries and other third parties to test their SPOC implementations. Entrust's demonstration implemented the standardized certificate management protocol to be used across international borders, emulated a fully functional SPOC interface and enabled users to test their SPOC capabilities online.

The Entrust SPOC ePassport solution is a component of the Entrust Authority public key infrastructure (PKI) platform. Entrust provides a unique dual-rooted ePassport PKI certification authority (CA) to allow seamless migration from first-generation (BAC) deployments to second-generation (EAC) architectures. Entrust provides ePassport security for many governments, including the U.S., Finland, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Singapore, New Zealand and more.

The SPOC model and certificate management protocol were defined by the Brussels Interoperability Group, operating under the direction of the European Union Article 6 Committee. The specification was approved by the EU Article 6 Committee in June 2009.

The SPOC model serves as the standardized mechanism for certificate management between countries for support of EAC-enabled ePassports. Each participating nation establishes a SPOC interface that acts as a front-end for their domestic EAC components. International EAC certificate requests and responses are communicated directly between SPOCs.

EAC is the process defined for ensuring that only authorized entities are able to access biometric data (e.g., iris scan and/or fingerprint) stored on the contactless chip on an ePassport. The specification describes an architecture to enable cross-jurisdiction enablement of  passport inspection systems (IS) to authenticate to the contactless chip of the passport, as well as the authorization of that IS to access the protected biometrics.

For more information on SPOC or Entrust's ePassport solution, visit entrust.com/epassport.

About Entrust

Entrust provides identity-based security solutions that empower enterprises, consumers, citizens and Web sites in more than 4,000 organizations spanning 60 countries. Entrust's identity-based approach offers the right balance between affordability, expertise and service. For strong authentication, fraud detection, digital certificates, SSL and PKI, call 888-690-2424, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.entrust.com.

Entrust is a registered trademark of Entrust, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. In Canada, Entrust is a registered trademark of Entrust Limited. All Entrust product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Entrust, Inc. or Entrust Limited. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Entrust