Microsoft has deployed a smartcard employee identity system at its
Redmond, USA campus using technology from ActivCard. The smartcard
system uses strong encryption to manage employees' physical access
to the site and remote access to company networks.
The smartcards have been issued to a wide range of personnel with
access to the campus, including regular employees and contractors
working for the company, according to ActivCard. More than 25,000
cards have been issued to employees as part of the initial
deployment, which concluded in early September.
The new smartcard will control access to buildings but will not be
used to secure access to networks within the building. "Once you're
in, you're in," said a spokesman.
Employees who wish to connect to the company network from home or
the road have been given smartcard readers for desktop or laptop
computers. When connecting remotely, the employee's smartcard must
be in the card reader and the employee must enter a personal
identification number (PIN) for the card before being prompted to
log on to the company's network, according to Miller.
The ActivCard smartcard, which is sold as part of a packaged
solution referred to as the ActivCard Identity Management System
(AIMS), is similar to ActivCard's Common Access Card (CAC) system.
This is currently used by the US Department of Defence to manage
the physical and logical access of over 4.3 million government
employees and contractors - the largest deployment of smartcard
technology in the world.
Capable of storing employee information including PIN, security
credentials such as multiple public key infrastructure (PKI)
certificates as well as biometric information, the cards can also
be configured to contain employee health and benefit information,
payroll information, and even e-cash that could be used to make
purchases, according to a statement released by the company.
Microsoft said it has no plans to use biometric information to
authenticate employees, and has no plans to use the cards for
anything beyond physical access to the Redmond campus and login
security for remote users.