G&D Becomes First Manufacturer to Gain ITI Certification for New eID Cards in Brazil
Munich/Rio de Janeiro, April 18, 2012 – GD Burti, the Brazilian subsidiary of international technology group Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), is the first and thus far only manufacturer of national security documents to meet the security requirements for the new Brazilian eID cards. The high-security RIC (Registry of Civil Identity) cards have been granted certification by Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação, Brazil’s foremost IT authority. GD Burti has already delivered more than one million RIC cards as part of an initial pilot project. RIC cards store biometric data and will make it easier for Brazilian nationals to visit other Mercosur treaty states.
The new RIC card meets the Brazilian government’s standards for its national ID cards – which must contain an eID application as well as a match-on-card solution for fingerprints – thus enabling unambiguous identification of individuals: state authorities such as the police will be able to scan a person’s fingerprints using a portable device and compare them with those stored on the person’s ID card. Additional security is ensured by Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which guarantees the authenticity of the data stored on the chip. The RIC card enables each Brazilian citizen to be registered under a single number valid nationwide. That eliminates one of the biggest security risks of the country’s current ID documents, which require multiple registrations in the various federal states under different registration numbers.
The RIC card is a hybrid card containing both a contact-based and a contactless module. The latter comprises a travel application that complies with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and will facilitate travel between the Mercosur treaty states. Both a photographic image of the ID holder and the holder’s fingerprints are stored on the RIC card.
What is more, a variety of optical and electrical security features protect the RIC card against forgery and enable citizens to verify a card’s authenticity quickly. These include integrated kinegrams, guilloches and other optical elements such as microtext or rainbow print.
GD Burti is currently the first and only card manufacturer to be granted the ITI certification, which it received in February of this year. The standards of Brazil’s top IT authority, Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação, are comparable with FIPS, the Federal Information Processing Standard formulated by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. As from June 2012, the ITI certification will be mandatory in Brazil for all new national eID documents with PKI signature functionality. GD Burti thus already meets the prerequisites for taking part in the upcoming tender for the manufacture and delivery of Brazil’s national ID cards. The company has already delivered more than one million RIC cards to Brazilian authority Casa da Moeda do Brasil as part of a pilot project. G&D’s subsidiary in Brazil invested heavily in the upgrade of its production facility last year, putting it in a position to mass-produce ID documents.
About Giesecke & Devrient
Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is a leading international technology provider headquartered in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1852, the Group has a workforce of around 10,500 employees and generated sales exceeding EUR 1.6 billion in fiscal 2011. 58 subsidiaries and joint ventures in 32 countries ensure customer proximity worldwide. Over 150 countries place their trust in G&D solutions when producing and processing their banknotes. The company primarily supplies central and commercial banks, cash-in-transit companies, and security printers with innovative technologies that render the cash cycle efficient and secure. G&D bank and SIM cards are used all over the world to make payments and telephone calls. As an end-to-end provider of smartcard and mobile security solutions, the Group develops and distributes hardware, software, and services to a client base that includes banks, mobile network operators, transportation companies, business enterprises, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Governments and public authorities turn to G&D for passport, ID card, and border control systems, ensuring reliable identity verification right around the globe. For further information, please visit www.gi-de.com
