Zetes Industries S.A. / N.V. (Zetes) is a pan-European technology company in the industry for automatic identification of both goods and people. Zetes is headquartered in Brussels with operations in Europe, Africa and Israel.

Goods identification
Zetes develops systems for different steps in the supply chain of manufacturing, transportation, logistics, warehousing and retail. Zetes’ implementations are based on auto ID technologies: bar codes, RFID, printing, print & apply, voice recognition, image ID.

People identification
Zetes delivers people authentication solutions to governments, administrative units and public institutions, based on technologies: biometrics, AFIS and smart cards. People authentication is used in the areas of people registration, mass enrollment, data centralization and validation, secure document production and electronic voting.

Background

Zetes currently is the manufacturer of the Belgium eID card that is supplied to every citizen in Belgium. The card authenticates the end user over 500 websites ranging from taxes, pension and universities. Initially they had a few requests to be able to authenticate using their eID card on mobile devices, specifically iOS devices such as iPhone/iPad. Zetes identified a new area of business but had no solution.

Zetes faced a significant challenge with supporting the Belgium eID cards on mobile devices. The first item implemented was the iR301U to read the cards. This was clearly shown to work on mobile devices but still lacked the middleware needed to read Belgium eID card and authenticate on mobile devices.

Zetes has rich technology to read their eID card, include card identification and authentication for specific website on PC platform, but they don’t have experiences on mobile side, to support their people using their eID card on mobile device need to develop a secure browser allow do verify and authentication with government website.

Zetes then contacted FEITIAN and provided test eID card for integration.

Solution

With 20 years' experiences for PKI technology, FEITIAN has rich products, include card reader and card middleware, also key technology for COS (card operation system), we've done many government and banking project for secure access, like login government TAX web/software, and online banking project.

Based on Zetes’s request, FEITIAN provides mobile security browser for iOS and Android, which is OEM browser application on mobile device, the end user can download secure browser App from Appstore or Google play, they can work with Zetes OEM card reader (based on iR301) with their ID card, to access the specific website, check their TAX, Educations and person information.

The secure browser include web browsing, pages management, certificate management, SSL login, log management, smart tips, card information and site navigation functions.

The solution used openssl, libcurl, https, ssl and webkit to handle the website stuff. The CCID, PC/SC, external framework, OTG to handle the card and reader communication on iOS and Android, we enveloped the APDU based on ISO 7816 protocol to handle the card logic part, like read certificates and verify PIN and other functions.

Result

The full solution offered to Zetes allowed them to complete their targeted goal of allowing Belgium eID card users to access sites on mobile devices. Outside of this FEITIAN provided an affordable pricing for both the hardware and software application development to allow them to market the new solution at an affordable rate and capture the leading market share.