First Open Source eID-Client certified by BSI – BSI TR-03124 certificate for Open eCard App

[Michelau, January 12th 2016] The German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, BSI) has certified the current version of the Open eCard App according to its technical guideline BSI TR-03124 (eID-Client). The certificate, which has been awarded the very first time to an Open Source component and without any failures in the conformity report, is valid until December 8th 2020 and enables the trustworthy use of electronic identity (eID) cards and other smart cards with Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

Platform-independent and lightweight Open Source eID-Client

Thanks to the constructive cooperation of industrial and academic experts within the Open eCard project, a lightweight and platform-independent Open Source implementation of the “eCard-API-Framework” according to BSI TR-03112 was created, which supports various smart cards for electronic identity, health, signatures and banking from Germany, Austria, Estonia and Belgium for example. Based on this framework a user-friendly eID-Client according to BSI TR-03124 – also known as the “Open eCard App” – was created, which now has been certified by the BSI. Because of the modular architecture based on the international standard ISO/IEC 24727, the Open eCard App can easily be extended and smoothly integrated into modern web applications.

With continuous improvement and strict Quality Management to the BSI TR-03124 certificate without conformity failures

To ensure the conformity to the relevant technical specifications of the BSI and a high level of quality, the Bavarian State Ministry of Finance started the certification process according to BSI TR-03124 for the Open eCard App in 2014. Thanks to continuous improvement and a strict Quality Management system based on international standards such as ISO/IEC 9001 and ISO/IEC 90003 and utilizing the Open Source eID-Client-Testbed of the BSI, the current version 1.2 of the Open eCard App now has been formally certified by the BSI. Note, that it is the first time ever that an Open Source eID-Client received a certificate according to
BSI TR-03124. „We are particularly proud of the fact, that the test report shows that there are
no conformity failures, „Open eCard Project Maintainer“ Tobias Wich complements. „On the one hand this underlines the high quality of the Open eCard software and on the other hand it creates further trust and confidence for the German eID card and similar smart cards.“

„As shown by the example of ‚SkIDentity‘, the secure, extensible and user-friendly Open eCard App has already several times formed the basis of distinguished and awarded systems solutions“, replenished Dr. Detlef Hühnlein, CEO of ecsec GmbH and head of the Open eCard project. „We are delighted, that a first result of our work now is not only awarded, but also certified.“

Open eCard Team invites users and contributors!

The Open eCard Team is an open community, which invites interested citizens and organisations to participate. If you want to use the Open eCard App for eGovernment, eHealth, eBusiness or eCommerce, or if you want to support the development of the Open eCard App, you are heartily invited to join the Open eCard Team at http://join.openecard.org.

About the Open eCard project

The Open eCard Team (see http://openecard.org) consists of industrial and academic experts, who have joined forces to provide an Open Source and platform independent implementation of ISO/IEC 24727, such that arbitrary applications can easily access arbitrary smart cards for authentication and signature purposes. A first result of the project is the Open eCard App, which is the first Open Source eID-Client certificated according to BSI TR-03124.

 

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Contact:

Dr. Detlef Hühnlein

Project Manager Open eCard

c/o ecsec GmbH

Sudetenstraße 16

96247 Michelau, Germany

E-Mail: info@openecard.org

http://www.openecard.org

 

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