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NXP Semiconductors is launching its state-of-the art microcontroller smart card IC MIFARE Plus at Cartes 2008 in Paris, France. MIFARE Plus is the latest addition to NXP's MIFARE family of chips, the leading technology in the market for contactless smart card ICs used in transport networks and access management worldwide.
At Cartes, NXP will demonstrate multiple levels of enhanced security available to customers with MIFARE Plus, including 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the easy migration path from existing MIFARE Classic implementations.
The chip complements NXP's leading range of contactless microcontroller ICs, such as MIFARE DESFire and SmartMX, which are already providing superior levels of performance and security in the automatic fare collection, access management, eGovernment and banking markets.
Jonathan Collins from ABI Research points out that "NXP's MIFARE technology has helped push contactless smart cards into transport ticketing, payment and access management. MIFARE Plus presents a ready path for existing MIFARE contactless transportation schemes to migrate to a new level of security and raises the security for new deployments and applications."
Customers and partners in the contactless applications market have welcomed the advanced capabilities of NXP's latest offering in the MIFARE portfolio: "We see major advantages with MIFARE Plus for seamlessly upgrading infrastructures to leading-edge security in a variety of contactless applications systems while providing an optimized security-cost ratio," said Pascal Roux, Marketing Manager, at Affiliated Computer Services Solutions, a global provider of business process and information technology services.
According to NXP, security, performance, privacy and ease of use are at the heart of MIFARE Plus. It offers strong AES encryption for authentication, integrity and confidentiality, and MIFARE Plus's AES security avoids performance degradation to current infrastructure service levels. MIFARE Plus chips comprise a number of additional security features which, when used optimally in the infrastructure, provide a system that prevents individuals from being identified and tracked by others.
Finally, migration planning is made easier as MIFARE Plus supports the pre-issuance of new cards; co-existence of current and new cards; and software based infrastructure upgrades.
First samples of MIFARE Plus are being demonstrated at Cartes and will be released within 2008, supporting first customer roll-outs from mid 2009.
Source: NXP Semiconductors
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