Description
By providing secure remote access to hardware credentials such as smart cards, the vSEC:ID Multi Terminal application enables smart card security for complex workstations with several terminals as well as cloud based and virtual environments. Because the level of communication used is very low, the application is not dependent on the type of smart card used and therefore works perfectly with many organizations’ legacy systems.
Overview of vSEC:ID Multi Terminal
The functionality provided by the vSEC:ID Multi Terminal is to allow the access to a physical smart card connected to a host to a remote PC (or VM). This means that the remote PC will be able to use the physical smart card, which is connected to a different host, even though the remote PC does not have a smart card physically connected to it.
The vSEC:ID Multi Terminal installs a Windows service, which acts as a layer between the PC/SC layer and the smart card reader driver layer. This service allows the communication between the host where the smart card is physically attached to and the remote host which will use the smart card. The communication channel between the services is encrypted.
vSEC:ID Multi Terminal Use-Case
A typical use case where the vSEC:ID Multi Terminal can be used are in environments where a user needs to operate on two workstations, workstation A and workstation B, both of which require MS Windows smart card logon using the users’ credential stored on his smart card. The user accesses workstation B from workstation A. It would only be possible to access workstation B by sharing the physical smart card attached to workstation A. This is a problem since the user is already logged into workstation A with his smart card and therefore it would not be possible to perform an MS Windows smart card logon to workstation B in this type of situation. Using the vSEC:ID Multi Terminal application this is possible, since it is possible to share access to a physical smart card from one workstation to another, thereby providing all the smart card functionality to a workstation even though a smart card is not physically attached to it.
