HID Global introduces new Seos credentials

By SSN Staff

AUSTIN, Texas—HID Global, a provider of trusted identity solutions, announced it has expanded its Seos credential family with two new products.

The Seos 16K is the industry’s first credential certified to the highest IT security level established by the independent testing service provider TÜV Informationstechnik GmbH, and it features the highest memory in the series to support multi-application deployments. Seos Essential is a new, single-application credential that delivers trusted security, data protection for deployments where complex implementations are not necessary.

“Seos technology continues to evolve to meet the needs of sophisticated users, while also offering new economical options for basic physical access control in everyday applications,” said Harm Radstaak, Senior Vice President and Head of Physical Access Control Solutions with HID Global. “In addition to expanding the Seos family to meet broader requirements, we have achieved a major smart card industry certification milestone that gives organizations the confidence they can mitigate risk by investing in a credential that has been independently validated by a qualified and unbiased third party.”

The TÜV SEAL-5 standards represent a more stringent approach than other security evaluation standards in that it requires a robust and validated change management policies, communication processes and lifecycle management procedures.

HID’s TÜV-certified Seos 16K card is the successor to its offering for multi-application use cases that require 16 kilobytes (KB) of memory. The credential now features a new hardware platform to deliver improved read performance and an enhanced Seos operating system that has been certified to the most rigorous Security Assurance Level (SEAL) in the TÜV methodology for evaluating trusted site and product security. The TÜV SEAL-5 evaluation signifies all requirements have been fulfilled for delivering the highest level of IT product or service trustworthiness.

The Seos Essential card offers a cost-effective and simplified approach to providing trusted management of secure identities. Users benefit from all of the proven and highly secure, multi-layered features of HID’s Seos technology. This includes the latest cryptographic algorithms and security techniques, plus a secure messaging protocol that protects data transmission between card and reader. The credential is fully supported by the HID Signo and iCLASS SE reader platforms. It is also available as a multi-technology card, combining 125 KHz Prox and a high-frequency Seos contactless microprocessor.