CIE Components in Electronics
NXP Semiconductors has announced that it has launched its new SmartMX2-P40 platform of chip card microcontrollers for large-scale projects in the rapidly growing banking and electronic-Government (eGov) markets. The move comes in response to global concerns about identity theft, fraud and privacy.
The SmartMX2-P40 has a new RISC MRK3-SC core and meets common criteria EAL5+ level certification via NXP’s IntegralSecurity architecture. Looking to combine performance with security NXP said that the new platform had been optimised for mass market chip card projects.
Chip cards, already extensively used in government ID cards, have become more pervasive in applications such as health cards and driving licenses as the overall cost of employing the technology has stabilized. At the same time, there is a constant need to introduce new protection measures to stay in line with evolving security requirements. The SmartMX2-P40 offers dedicated co-processors for asymmetric RSA/ECC and symmetric DES/AES cryptography, and comes equipped with a certified hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and crypto library for fast time-to-market. An ISO/IEC 7816 contact interface ensures that the SmartMX-P40 can be used in existing chip card infrastructures.
“Even with a general trend towards contactless and dual-interface chip cards, the contact chip card Banking and eGovernment markets not only show a remarkable continuity, but are expected to significantly and consistently grow further,” said Ulrich Huewels, senior vice president, business line secure card solutions, NXP Semiconductors. “The SmartMX2-P40 secure microcontrollers with advanced security features are dedicated to serving these high-volume applications and large scale projects.”
Using an embedded secure microcontroller to safeguard data, chip cards have long been proven to drive down fraud and protect identity. To protect against identity theft, governments began issuing chip cards for identification, health insurance and social security purposes. In the financial sector, credit and debit chip cards have reduced fraud by over 70%. Well over five billion chip cards are now in circulation globally, the majority of which are contact only. The new SmartMX2-P40 complements the SmartMX family by providing a highly secure platform dedicated to the needs of contact smart card projects and their end customers.
