Workshops for Australian web security system

Centrelink are holding free workshops in Australia and the USA for smartcard developers to use its Protocol for Lightweight Authentication of Identity (PLAID). Unfortunately, Centrelink issued the media release about this as a Microsoft Word document with a large logo on the top, making the one page document 20 times larger than it need be. Here is the text, minus the logo:

Australian Government

Centrelink Media Release

Thursday, 4 June, 2009

Workshops for developers of Centrelink IT security solution

Centrelink is holding free workshops in Australia and the USA to help access-system and smartcard developers understand its smartcard authentication protocol: PLAID.

PLAID stands for Protocol for Lightweight Authentication of ID. It was developed in-house by Centrelink IT Security staff and released for free to anyone – including manufacturers.

Centrelink is holding two-day workshops in Canberra on 23 and 24 June and Washington DC, USA, in July, with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

PLAID is being evaluated as a standard in Australia and the USA. It is a protocol that specifies how components of a card-based ID authentication system ‘talk’ to each other.

These two-day workshops will assist access system and smartcard developers with the incorporation of PLAID into their products.

The workshops assume knowledge of smartcard-based authentication protocols and the ISO/IEC 14443 and ISO/IEC 7816 suites of smartcard standards.

It is Centrelink’s intention that both the physical and logical access security vendor community and its customer base become well informed about PLAID so it can be incorporated into off-the-shelf product.

Interested vendors should review the PLAID web site at http://www.govdex.gov.au/confluence/display/PLAID and complete the respective application forms

Centrelink is migrating its 27,000 staff from random number generators to a PKI Certificate-based smartcard system this year, and plans to update those smartcards with a PLAID application in 2010 once commercial products are available.

For more information see Centrelink.gov.au and Govdex.gov.au

Media contact: Simon Ferguson, Centrelink Media, (02) 6155 1749 ...