CellTrust Corporation, a provider of SecureSMS for mobile phones, announced that it is preparing patent-pending, NFC-provisioning APIs using SecureSMS, in anticipation of NFC technology rollout beginning in early 2011.
Designed to make life much easier for the end-user, provisioning NFC will require the carrier to send sensitive and confidential information to the mobile subscriber’s handset. While a few methods exist to provision NFC, CellTrust believes SMS is the optimal choice because it uses the mobile communications control channel, which is separate from voice and data and operates regardless of the voice or data being used.
The control channel has high-resiliency, low-bandwidth requirements and was designed for carriers to send specific commands and instructions to the handset via SMS. Provisioning NFC with CellTrust’s SecureSMS APIs addresses spoofing with a fully authenticated, government-grade, highly encrypted, tamper-proof process, which also enables message sizes up to 5,000 characters.
CellTrust’s SecureSMS NFC APIs use Short Message Service Center (SMSC) and enables carriers to use their existing investment in SMS infrastructure while provisioning NFC, therefore a new NFC platform is not required. Carriers can integrate with the SecureSMS APIs and send secure commands and instructions to the handset to provision NFC with all types of transactions, including adding and deleting credit cards.
SecureSMS also gives mobile network operators an added level of security for Over-The-Air configuration and provisioning of mobile devices compared to today’s standard SMS infrastructure, which is not tamper proof and can be spoofed. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/nfcnews-4.gif)
