A Wisenet video surveillance camera, which might normally be expected to be seen installed at airports, car parks, stadia, industrial estates or within city centres, has been deployed to monitor activity at a volcano erupting near Reykjavik, Iceland.

The Wisenet XNP-6040H PTZ camera, manufactured by Hanwha Techwin, is being used by media company MBL, to stream live video to the world of the eruption and despite the exposed conditions, it is proving to be more than up to the job by continuously capturing 2-megapxiel colour images of the volcanic activity.

The camera was installed in February 2021 following on from the start of strong seismic activity within the Reykjanes Peninsula. This included several 5+ magnitude earthquakes and thousands of smaller ones, with an eruption occurring on 19 March 2021. The last eruption was approximately 800 years ago.

The XNP-6040H, which was supplied to MBL by Hafnes ehf, Hanwha Techwin Europe’s authorised distributor in Iceland, was installed within a weather-proof housing and is powered by solar panels.

“We are delighted to have had the opportunity to provide MBL with a robust and reliable camera to help them share images of this dramatic event which has attracted viewers from around the world”, said Hafnes ehf’s manager, Hafliði Jónsson. “The intention is for the camera to remain in place long term so that in addition to entertaining the general public, it can also be a valuable resource for geology students and volcanologists”.

A new report on the Smart Card market including Covid-19 impacts by Marketsandmarkets, markets estimates that this sector is projected to reach USD 16.9 billion by 2026 from USD 13.9 billion in 2021, with a CAGR growth of 4.0% from 2021 to 2026.

Major drivers for the growth of the market are surged demand for contactless card (tap-and-pay) payments amid Covid-19, proliferation of smart cards in healthcare, transportation, and BFSI verticals; increased penetration of smart cards in access control and personal identification applications; and easy access to e-government services and risen demand for online shopping and banking. Moreover, new modes of user information security enabled by blockchain and adoption of smart cards in populated countries of APAC act as growth opportunities for developers of smart cards.

Contactless projected for largest market share
A contactless smart card includes an embedded smart card secure microcontroller or equivalent intelligence, internal memory, and a small antenna; it communicates with readers through a contactless radio frequency (RF) interface. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC) communication technologies are primarily used for contactless smart card applications. Covid-19 is positively impacting the contactless smart card market as the World Health Organization (WHO) and governments across the world are advocating the use of contactless smart cards for various purposes to ensure social distancing to contain the spread of the virus. Contactless smart cards provide ease, speed, and convenience to users. The contactless interface has become highly relevant in the current Covid-19 situation, especially for payment applications, as it facilitates safe and secure transactions without physical contact.

Telecommunications strongest vertical
A subscriber identity module (SIM) card is a type of microcontroller-based smart card used in mobile phones and other devices. A SIM identifies and authenticates a subscriber to a wireless cell phone network. The telecommunications segment accounted for the maximum share with 42% of the smart card market in 2020. Expanding global mobile network and improvements in its infrastructure are boosting the growth of the market. In addition, Covid-19 led to an increased demand for connectivity, and the researchers found that the current crisis provided a push to the trend of digitalisation of business and private communication with cellular technology, along with the generalisation of digital conferences. Moreover, the penetration of high-end SIM card technologies, such as LTE, 5G, M2M, eSIM, and SWP, is expected to augment the market growth in the coming years.

Geographical stronghold
The analysts suggest that the APAC region is the largest market for smart cards and is expected to lead the way for a few years. The robust financial system that is being increasingly digitised and government agencies incorporating smart chip-based systems for better monitoring of processes are propelling several APAC countries to adopt smart card solutions owing to increasing demand, specifically in the transportation, BFSI, retail, government, and healthcare sectors. Smart cards are used to purchase tickets in metros, buses, and ferries, amongst others, in several countries in APAC countries. China is projected to witness the highest demand for smart cards in the region with its large consumer base and the presence of a number of smart card manufacturers.

Some of the major companies playing a prominent role in this market and named by the researchers in the report include, Thales, Idemia, Giesecke + Devrient, CPI Card, HID Global, Watchdata, Eastcompeace, Inteligensa, AB Corp, and Cardlogix.

At the end of March, Dahua Technology released its 2020 annual report, showing the company’s steady growth in the past year, as well as a sustainable development committed to development and innovation.

During 2020, Dahua Technology achieved operating revenue of RMB 26.466 billion (USD 4.06 billion), representing a year-on-year increase of 1.21%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company amounted to RMB 3.903 billion (USD 599 million), growing 22.42% year on year.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging and profound impact on the development of the international community, the global economy (be it agricultural, industrial or digital) and the smart IoT industry. Dahua Technology, by expanding the in-depth application of the IoT technology in the city-level and enterprise-level markets, is enabling the digital transformation of cities, enterprises and homes with one-stop smart IoT services and solutions.

Focused on AI, cloud storage, big data platform and IoT technology, Dahua Technology’s R & D investment in 2020 reached USD 460 million with year-on-year increase of 7.28%, accounting for 11.33% of operating revenue.

Dahua Technology operates a global marketing and service network through 180 countries to provide customers with efficient and end-to-end services. The company has established 58 subsidiaries and representative offices and more than 100 after-sales service stations in the world, while nearly 100 image stores and over 3000 element stores have been set up in 2020. In addition, overseas R&D divisions have started operations in both Europe and the Americas for localised development of software platforms, which will significantly improve the customer needs, response and speed.

Suprema has integrated its latest facial recognition devices into Nedap’s access control system, AEOS, enabling organisations around the world to manage access control by making use of Suprema’s latest facial recognition technology.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has shaken up the security and building management industry, resulting in a surge of interest in contactless access control. Thanks to the flexibility of our open platform, we have been able to quickly adapt to these changing customer requests. We have a great partner in Suprema who stands at the forefront of biometric innovation,” said Ruben Brinkman, alliance manager at Nedap.

For the past years, Suprema and Nedap have continuously released new integrated solutions. Suprema achieved this facial recognition integration by using Nedap’s Bio-API,.specifically developed to enable biometric solution integration into AEOS.

“The addition of Suprema’s face recognition devices with Nedap AEOS will allow customers to take advantage of a wider variety of Suprema’s biometric solutions. Suprema and Nedap will continue to strengthen our collaboration to bring new innovative solutions to quickly adapt to market needs, such as the recent demand for contactless security solutions,” said Hanchul Kim, the CEO of Suprema Inc.

The integration utilises a ‘single platform’ approach, meaning that there is no need for operators to switch screens. They can continue working in AEOS to manage enrolment and biometric identities. The biometric profiles are stored in Suprema’s security platform Biostar 2 and are constantly synchronised with AEOS. an information exchange safeguarded through SSL certificates, which provides strong encryption.

Both Nedap and Suprema are strongly committed to maintaining the integration, ensuring future backward compatibility and adding new functionalities along the way.

The new ETSI TS 119 182-1 is a specification for digital signatures supported by PKI and public key certificates which authenticates the origin of transactions ensuring that the originator can be held accountable and access to sensitive resources can be controlled.

This standard is a major achievement for interoperability of digital signatures for a range of applications in today’s digital economy including the banking and financial world where so far, some 4,000 banks were using various signing algorithms for their APIs to secure their online transactions.

Called JAdES, ETSI TS 119 182-1 comes in support of secure communications fulfilling the requirements of the European Union eIDAS Regulation (No 910/2014) for advanced electronic signatures and seals and regulatory requirements for services such as open banking.

This JAdES digital signature specification is based on JSON Web Signature and contains the features already defined in the related ETSI standards for AdES (advanced electronic signature/seal) applied to other data formats including XML, PDF and binary. The standard was developed with contributions from a number of stakeholders including representatives from the banking sector who, through Open Banking Europe, have brought their operational requirements to align European APIs onto one security model.

Nick Pope, Vice-Chair of the ETSI technical committee on Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures (ESI) comments: “The ETSI JAdES standard builds on ETSI’s decades of experience in defining standards for applying digital signatures to a variety of document formats to provide evidence of their authenticity supported by European Regulations. Working with Open Banking Europe, ETSI has developed a solution which matches the requirements of Open Banking APIs whilst assuring the authenticity of financial transactions.”

ETSI TS 119 182-1 can be used for any transaction between an individual and a company, between two companies, between an individual and a governmental body, etc. applicable to any electronic communications.

Electronic commerce has emerged as a frequent way of doing business between companies across local, wide area and global networks. Trust in this way of doing business is essential for the success and continued development of electronic commerce. It is therefore important that companies using this electronic means of doing business have suitable security controls and mechanisms in place to protect their transactions and to ensure trust and confidence with their business partners. In this respect digital signatures are an important security component that can be used to protect information, provide trust in electronic business and prevent tampering.

The series of significant integrations with Partizan Security participation are continued. Now our IP CCTV cameras are compatible with CathexisVision software.

Cathexis is an electronic and software systems development and manufacturing company, specialised in video management solutions (VMS) for the international market.

The company has been developing solutions for the industry for more than 20 years and has significant blue-chip and governmental customers in European Union, USA, South Africa, Great Britain, Australia, India, Africa and Middle East. Cathexis’ video surveillance solutions can be found in all vertical markets.

The capability of the software to easily integrate deeply with 3rd party products, like network I.P Surveillance Cameras, Access Control, Intruder and Fire panels and many other digital products enables it to supply systems that offer holistic solutions beyond security. This increases the customers return on investment, as they see the Cathexis video management solutions adding value in many aspects of their business.

In 2020 it was awarded by the Benchmark Magazine Best VMS for ease of operator use, simplicity of configuration and rich feature set. CathexisVision is a powerful yet highly cost effective and exceptionally stable VMS.

We are confident that our high-tech CCTV cameras with CathexisVision software will provide users with even more functionality for high-quality video surveillance of open areas and premises.