CTST 2008, Orlando, Fla., May 13, 2008–The Smart Card Alliance today announced the 2008 award winners for “Outstanding Smart Card Achievement” (OSCA) in the North American and Latin American smart card industry during its annual conference, taking place at the CTST 2008 The Americas Conference and Exhibition.

The 2008 Outstanding Smart Card Achievement Award Winners

• Individual Leadership Award: Gilles Lisimaque, partner, Identification Technology Partners, Inc., for his 20 year record of accomplishment and leadership in the industry; he holds multiple patents on smart card security and smart card operating system design, and has held high-level seats with and actively contributed to the Smart Card Alliance and numerous other security forums and standards organizations

• Outstanding Issuing Organization: U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) for its role in personalizing and issuing the federal government’s Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards for more than 65 federal agencies and departments; the PIV is a common, governmentwide smart card credential for both physical access control and information security that is being issued to all federal government employees and subcontractors

• Outstanding Supplier Organization: Oberthur Technologies, a leading provider of smart cards and related services worldwide that has demonstrated leadership in several sectors of the North American smart card market, particularly contactless payment cards and U.S. federal government’s PIV card program

• Smart Card Achievement in Latin America: TIM Brazil, a mobile GSM company that internally uses digital certificates and fingerprint match-on-card technology for strong authentication

“We had an exceptional group of OSCA candidates this year, because there are now so many outstanding organizations involved in high-impact smart card programs,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “The judges singled out these candidates for recognition because of their role in bringing many of these projects to fruition, their long standing dedication to success, and their commitment to leadership and education within in our industry.”

2008 OSCA Runner Up and Honorable Mention Candidates

For the first time this year, the Alliance also recognized the First Runner Up and Honorable Mention candidates.

The Outstanding Issuer Organization Runner Up was Philadelphia’s PATCO (Port Authority Transit Corporation) for its FREEDOM card, a contactless fare payment program. Another transit operator, the Boston MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) received Honorable Mention for its Charlie Card contactless program.

The Outstanding Supplier Organization Runner Up was INSIDE Contactless, a leading supplier of contactless components. Honorable Mention went to HID Global, for its work in enabling hybrid physical and logical access control implementations.

For Smart Card Achievement in Latin America, the Runner Up was Banrisul, the largest bank in Southern Brazil and the first bank in Latin America to implement a full-grade EMV program. Certisign received Honorable Mention for its smart card-based PKI solutions.

Individual Leadership Award Runner Up recognition went posthumously to Peter Uehlecke, formerly the market development manager for STMicroelectronics, in fond memory and as a tribute to his many years of contributions to the smart card industry.

A distinguished panel representing practitioners, technology providers and media, all with extensive smart card technology experience and industry visibility, selected the award winners. The 2008 OSCA jury members were Iana Bohmer, Northrop Grumman; Chris Corum, Avisian Publications; Willy Dommen, Booz Allen Hamilton; Kevin Gillick, GlobalPlatform; Gary Glickman, Imadgen; Neville Pattinson, Gemalto; and David Temoshok, GSA. The 2008 Latin America jury members were Marcelo Bellini, Sagem Orga; Humberto de la Vega, HID Global; Ismael Dykman, DataCard; and Martin Meyer, PaymentMedia.