Development of an Ontology-Based Smart Card System Reference Architecture

Abstract

In the information society the security of information during access and communication has of basic importance. Smart cards (SC) can integrate security services and the actual application functions, so they are perfect tool to fulfill the role of the key of information society. As there is extremely high number of different smart card applications developed individually, connecting these systems, their interoperability is a growing problem. An additional problem is that the combination of functions on one card needs the thorough configuration of the smart card software. Because of the frequent changes in the SC applications during the life cycle of the card, there is a more frequent need for the reconfiguration of the card software as well. A structured, general description, reference architecture of the smart card system elements and the possible relations among them could support the interoperability and configuration/ reconfiguration in a great extent. The chapter gives a short overview on smart card systems and applications, and introduces ontology - based smart card reference architecture and an smart card attack tree.