Smart Cards With Biometrics Surge
Although integrated smart cards and biometrics technology is only at an early growth phase, the stage is being set for its exceptional growth especially in Asia. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.smartcards.frost.com), “APAC Integrated Smart Cards and Biometrics Markets,” finds that the market earned $249.1 million in 2007 and is expected to reach $822.2 million by 2013.
The market has already bagged numerous and significant projects such as national ID and e-passport programs. National ID projects are the most active revenue generators for the market, since most governments in Asia are looking at implementing biometrics along with smart cards. A few national ID projects such as those of India’s and Malaysia’s have already started using biometric verification, while Japan’s and China’s are still at the planning stages. With many more countries looking at implementing national ID projects, and biometrics being one of the prerequisites for these projects, the market has good reasons to feel optimistic.
The market growth rate in 2006 was 55.2 percent, despite many of the national ID projects not operating at full scale. Considering that corporate security, banking, and e-passport programs have not reached their full potential, the unit shipment growth of smart cards with biometrics is expected to rocket in spite of fluctuations in the growth rate.
Apart from enhancing security, the integration of biometrics with smart cards eliminates the need for multiple identification requirements. This means that no time is lost in retrieving passwords or keys. Integrated systems also offer cost-conscious organizations with an opportunity to provide high levels of security at affordable prices.
Abuse to Consumer Brands Intensifies
MarkMonitor, a company that focuses on brand protection, released the company’s latest Brandjacking Index, which finds that cybersquatting is the most common form of online brand abuse — with a 33 percent jump in one year. Brandjackers are abusing an expanding range of brands that consumers use everyday. In addition, phishing techniques and targets continued in 2007 to evolve with a 533 percent increase in phish attacks against the retail and services sector.
The MarkMonitor Winter 2007 Brandjacking Index measures the effect of online threats to brands quarter-over-quarter throughout 2007. The Brandjacking Index investigates trends, including drilled-down analysis of how the most popular brands are abused online and the industries in which abuse is causing the most damage.
MarkMonitor’s Winter 2007 Brandjacking Index found that Cybersquatting continues to grow as brandjackers find new ways to source income.
Cybersquatting means registering, selling or using an Internet domain name with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark. MarkMonitor found sizable quarter-over-quarter increases in cybersquatting signifying the increased use of brand names and trademarks to drive traffic to illegitimate, unauthorized or offensive sites through search engines.
Brandjackers are increasingly shifting their focus to mainstream industry targets including automotive, food and beverage and consumer packaged goods. Abuses of automotive brands increased by 83 percent in 2007 with 94,809 instances noted in Q4 alone. Similarly, food and beverage brand abuse increased 63 percent, consumer packaged goods increased 62 percent and apparel increased 49 percent. Traditional brandjacking targets continued to rise at modest rates. Financial brand abuse for 2007 rose 23 percent and media rose 38 percent.
“Tracking trends over the course of a year shows that criminals and fraudsters around the world continue to develop new and adaptive ways to take advantage of brands,” said Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer for MarkMonitor.
UAE ATM Fraud
In a statement posted on the website, www.centralbank.ae, Saeed Abdulla Al-Hamiz, senior executive director, Banking Supervision and Examination Department, Central Bank of the UAE, announced: “We have been informed by one of the banks operating in the UAE that a gang of computer professionals has managed to insert an electronic reader into the card reader of one of its ATMs, which enabled them to copy the data of all the cards used in the said ATM during the period 19-25, February 2008.
They have also managed to compromise the PINs through a small video camera placed above the ATM.”
Such fraud is called card skimming. It happens when a skimmer, which is just a card swipe device that reads the information on a consumer’s ATM card, is inserted into the card slot on an ATM machine. See how it’s done at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCLsgxS38mE.
The UAE banks have been provided with a list of ATM cards belonging to customers who used the ATM machine involved in the fraud and have been instructed to either replace the cards or change the PINs as appropriate. UAE banks have also been instructed to check all their ATMs to make sure there is no evidence skimmers have been used on the machine or that there are other signs of tampering. Banks will also be reporting any losses from this fraud to the UAE Central Bank.
