Contracts open link to CAC

The Defense Department has announced the award of four contracts for software that will enable applications on users' desktops to communicate with the Common Access Card (CAC).

The Naval Inventory Control Point in Mechanicsburg, Pa., awarded this month four indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts valued at as much as $26 million to Datakey Inc., in Burnsville, Minn.; Litronic, a division of SSP Solutions Inc., in Irvine, Calif.; Schlumberger Omnes Inc., in Houston; and Spyrus Inc., in San Jose, Calif.

The companies will provide "middleware" — either software or an application programming interface — that will enable an application to communicate with the CAC, which is DOD's multi-application smart card, said Tom Dickens, chief operating officer of Spyrus.

The companies can sell their products across the department as Defense agencies work to roll out the CACs. The smart cards, which are about the size of a credit card, are embedded with a digital certificate that will allow users to encrypt e-mail and gain access to applications.

DOD started handing out the CACs in October 2001 and aims to have more than 4 million cards distributed by 2004.

Carl Boecher, president and chief executive officer of Datakey, said that it is much more secure to store the certificate on the smart card. Digital certificates that are stored on the hard drive of a PC are much more susceptible to being cracked.