The combination of WISeKey’s Identity solutions and Microsoft’s Citizen Services Platform enables local, regional and national governments to allow citizens and enterprises to identify and authenticate themselves for applications across borders and across multiple identity systems in a legally compliant manner.
Geneva and Redmond 23rd April 2009 - WISeKey today announced its partnership with Microsoft to deploy its Identity Semantics Suite with Microsoft’s Citizen Services Platform (CSP). The combination enables public services across borders and across legally accepted identity infrastructures operated by diverse public and private entities. This makes it easy for local, regional and national governments to deal with the complexity of identity systems and identity credentials that they are or will be required to accept as part of, for example, the European Services Directive (requiring a one-stop-shop treatment for businesses through electronic means). As a result, citizens and enterprises will be able to use existing or new electronic identity credentials that are legally accepted, to transact across borders with governments.
Governments at all levels are increasingly asked to respond to demands for improved service and efficiency. Microsoft Corp. and its partners are meeting this challenge through the availability of an applications platform, the Citizen Service Platform (CSP), which will make it easier for governments to interact with citizens, streamline processes and, as a result, save time and taxpayer dollars. Together with its partners, Microsoft and WISeKey have taken citizen services to a whole new level. WISeKey and Microsoft are now enabling the “Diputación Federal de Biscaya” to take this game-changing approach to their Citizen Services Platform.
“Governments, enterprises and citizens are no longer content with simply obtaining information from portals or having to download a form, print it and sign it. With WISeKey’s Identity Semantics Suite and Microsoft’s Citizen Service’s Platform, they can now do everything online and trust that they are legally compliant with administrative law now and in the future. Our Identity Semantics Suite covers the full identity and compliance cycle: identify, access, sign, encrypt, validate, timestamp, and archive”, said Juan Avellan, VP Public Sector and Deputy CEO at WISeKey. “We are very pleased that our long-term collaboration with Microsoft as their Lead eID partner has resulted in this success for our customers and allows them to meet the 2010 deadline set by the Member States of the European Union.”
“We are very pleased to be asociated with this exciting initiative. We look forward to developing our relationship with WiseKey and their leading identity technologies”, said Gordon Mckenzie, Microsoft's Director of Local and Regional Government for Microsoft.
WISeKey’s Identity Semantics Suite is a standards-driven combination of products and technologies that have been structured to meet WISeKey’s Guiding Principles for Government Identity Frameworks: 1) Assume Multiplicity of Identity Systems; 2) Balance Security/Privacy/Ease of use; 3) Strive for Identity Convergence; 4) Address Unique Needs of Each User (Semantics); 5) Public/Private Collaboration on Identity Infrastructures; 6) Maximize Synergies across services.
The CSP is an extensible package that enables repeatable implementation of local and regional government solutions. It leverages existing investments and easily scales as new business requirements arise. Built with Microsoft infrastructure components, it uses open standards and includes a set of common transactions so developers can build solutions that enable delivery of critical services to citizens, businesses and civil servants.
CSP is a comprehensive solution designed to help local governments worldwide to serve citizens and businesses to meet their needs for communication applications, search, citizen portal, interactive forms, geographical information systems (GIS), intranet portal, Web space, citizen contact center, citizen relationship management, case management, as well as document and record management. Microsoft has engaged leading partners like WISeKey to integrate their technology with the CSP for security, and with existing technology platforms used by local and regional governments.
Part of the solution to be delivered by WISeKey is a new generation semantic validation system which leverages the Web 2.0 functionalities and goes further by taking Citizen services into Web 3.0 interactions. Essentially, citizens will be able to access and transact through citizen services online with different logon mechanisms. Depending on the logon mechanism used, the Citizen portal will be adapted automatically to the functionalities allowed by the logon mechanism used. For example, with a high security electronic identity card, a citizen would be able to undertake the most complex citizen transactions whilst the use of a simple login/password mechanism would limit the functionalities available to the Citizen.
This also enables the Citizen to decide how far they wish to have their citizen services enabled online.
About WISeKey
WISeKey is a leading information security and identity management company that provides specialized security technologies for identity systems, data protection, workflow and long-term archiving compliance as well as effective identification and authentication of people and objects, over closed networks, physical infrastructures and the internet to ensure secure communications and e-transactions, without compromising trust.
Established in 1999, and head quartered in Geneva Switzerland, WISeKey also has subsidiaries in Bulgaria, Lebanon, Spain, UK, USA and Brazil through which it is able to deliver projects globally, to resolve advanced e-security issues for organizations in industry sectors such as defense, education, finance, and government. WISeKey solutions have been implemented for the Swiss e-voting system for the Canton of Geneva and the International Telecommunications Union e-commerce for developing countries project; and have contributed to the establishment of national identity systems, and passport, health and student ID cards.
WISeKey’s identity management, compliance, and secure access solutions are built using diverse technologies including Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) systems based on trusted computing principles. WISeKey’s solutions have been designed and built to overcome the complex identity issues that arise in public and private sector environments by following a series of guiding principles it has developed over time through hard-earned experience.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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Contacts and Information:
Estrella Vela
evela@wisekey.com
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