Smart Card Management Tool Provider Alacris Acquired

Improved smart-card administration is the goal of Microsoft’s latest acquisition, Alacris. The private Canadian software vendor provides tools for managing digital certificates and smart cards, which provide a more secure means of user authentication than passwords alone. The Alacris tools can significantly lower the cost of deploying and managing smart cards when compared with the bare-bones tools built into Windows.

Smart cards are wallet-sized cards or USB fobs with a microprocessor and memory. When used for Windows authentication, a card stores a secret key and performs cryptographic operations needed to identify the user during Windows login, at which time the user supplies a numeric PIN to unlock the card. The key on the card is tied to a digital certificate associated with the user’s Windows Active Directory account. Digital certificates are issued and revoked through a public key infrastructure (PKI), which also enables administrators to revoke certificates by including them in a document called a Certificate Revocation List (CRL). This effectively disables a lost or stolen card.