Smart Cards : A Guide to Building and Managing Smart Card Applications [Paperback]

J. Thomas Monk (Author), Henry N. Dreifus (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471157481 | ISBN-13: 978-0471157489 | Publication Date: December 24, 1997 | Edition: 1st

A complete nuts-and-bolts guide to designing, building, and managing the smart card system that's right for your company

Already a well-established medium of exchange in Europe, smart card technology has made major inroads in the North American market in the past few years. Visa and Mastercard are committed to replacing credit cards with them over the next five years, and Microsoft is racing to use them for e-commerce. Clearly, the time for asking "Why?" regarding smart cards has passed. The important question companies now should be asking themselves is "How?": how to plan, how to develop, how to implement, and how to manage the smart card system that is right for our company? This book provides complete, unbiased answers to these and all your technical and business questions about smart card systems.

Dreifus and Monk guide you step-by-step through the entire process of selecting, designing, building, and managing a smart card application tailored to your business. They supply numerous checklists to help guarantee that you make the correct technical decisions during each phase of the process. And they include real-world case studies illustrating successful smart card implementations in a variety of industries, including banking, manufacturing, entertainment, healthcare, and transportation. Crucial topics covered in detail include:
* Smart card architectures and standards
* Security and encryption
* Smart card operating systems
* Smart card application design and development
* Development tools
* Testing and certification

Smart Cards arms you with everything you need to know to make informed decisions about the smart card system that's right for your company.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The complete guide to the major technology of the emerging "cashless society". In the future, Smart Cards will replace cash and credit cards as the preferred method of payment. In fact, Visa and Mastercard have committed to replacing all credit cards with Smart Cards in the next five years, and Microsoft is trying to beat them to the punch. With this development moving so rapidly, many companies will have to move quickly to keep up. This book helps IT managers design, build and manage the proper Smart Card application for their company.

From the Back Cover

A complete nuts-and-bolts guide to designing, building, and managing the smart card system that's right for your company

Already a well-established medium of exchange in Europe, smart card technology has made major inroads in the North American market in the past few years. Visa and Mastercard are committed to replacing credit cards with them over the next five years, and Microsoft is racing to use them for e-commerce. Clearly, the time for asking "Why?" regarding smart cards has passed. The important question companies now should be asking themselves is "How?": how to plan, how to develop, how to implement, and how to manage the smart card system that is right for our company? This book provides complete, unbiased answers to these and all your technical and business questions about smart card systems.

Dreifus and Monk guide you step-by-step through the entire process of selecting, designing, building, and managing a smart card application tailored to your business. They supply numerous checklists to help guarantee that you make the correct technical decisions during each phase of the process. And they include real-world case studies illustrating successful smart card implementations in a variety of industries, including banking, manufacturing, entertainment, healthcare, and transportation. Crucial topics covered in detail include:
* Smart card architectures and standards
* Security and encryption
* Smart card operating systems
* Smart card application design and development
* Development tools
* Testing and certification

Smart Cards arms you with everything you need to know to make informed decisions about the smart card system that's right for your company.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (December 24, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471157481
• ISBN-13: 978-0471157489
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,718,408 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Superficial not Smart, March 8, 2000

By 

Stephan Meyer (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smart Cards : A Guide to Building and Managing Smart Card Applications (Paperback)

After reading this book I wasn't any smarter about smart cards. The charts and the introduction made me buy the book. But actually the book is very superficial. There is no real structure or framework that organizes the content. OK, there are chapters, but often it isn't at all clear why certain information is presented in a certain chapter. Also, it is not really clear how the different chapters are distinguished. The title of a chapter usually doesn't help you. Several pieces of information are presented over and over again in different chapters. Most of the information presented is common sense or well known software engineering principles. The information specific to smart cards is limited and not very detailed. Sometimes one could get the feeling that even the authors didn't really know more than the superficial information they present. A coworker of mine uses the term "consultant speak" for that kind of style. The charts and graphic are almost exclusively from other sources and not genuine to the book. They are usually only remotely related to what is discussed in the text and the authors don't bother explaining any of them. The case studies are not what you would normally expect from a case studies. They briefly mention a particular smart card project but don't really go into any details about technology or why certain design decisions were made. Most of the information given in the case study chapters is applicable to any kind of IT project. The check lists are pure common sense and sometimes unintentionally humorous. To sum it up: The book is easy to read but if you are serious about learning about smart cards, it doesn't help you at all. The claim to guide you through the whole process of a smart card project is a gross exaggeration. If you don't already know most of what you need to know from other sources, relying on this book alone will most likely make your project fail. The smart card specific information in the book could have easily been compressed into a nice 10 page white paper.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Bother!!!, April 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smart Cards : A Guide to Building and Managing Smart Card Applications (Paperback)

I have read this book and think it is useless. The author is very hard to understand and the technology is poorly explained.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Informercial, don't buy it., December 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Smart Cards : A Guide to Building and Managing Smart Card Applications (Paperback)

Very disappointing. I am 75% through this book and struggling to finish it. Whilst the book has some good information (smart card lingo, players in the industry, trends...etc) most are useless because the materials are so badly organised. Filling up the book with charts, diagrams and detailed reference tables of smart card standards does NOT make it a useful book, all are illrelevant without much deeper explanation. Remember when you were in high school, you copied a few paragraphs from one book and a few from an other to "write" an essay --- it reads just like that, very amateurish. A lot of the so called "case study" blah about how good/bad the technology is, but no details. It's an informercial.... "Buy my stuff, and I'm going to make you lots of money. This man with only a high school education bought my tape barely over 3 weeks and he is now making $5000 a week,....blah, blah, blah".... where is the bloody proof ?! It's a damn Monday night informercial. Oh, I actually work for a smart card company so I may be bias. Amazon should introduce half a point, this book is a bit below 1.