This page gives an overview of the mechanism of PIN verification and message authentication used between the SmartVista Front-End, on the one hand, and terminal devices, such as POS and ATM's, on the other hand. The same mechanisms and technologies are employed by the SmartVista Back-Office Card Production module for card personalisation and PIN Mailer printing. Therefore, a reference to this paragraph is made below in the SmartVista Back-Office Card Issuance section, and the following discussion covers both subjects.

To generate, verify and reencode PINs and also to generate and check CVV, CVC and PVV, SmartVista Front-End uses Thales eSecurity (Racal/Zaxus) Hardware Security Modules (HSM's). Depending on the HSM model, connection is provided either over TCP/IP or through an asynchronous line. All HSM interactions are performed by SmartVista Front-End software, and no additional application software needs to be purchased for this purpose.

The system will support multiple HSM's for load balancing purposes. Also, some of them may be used for on-line communications, others for batch jobs, such as PIN mailer printing and card generation. As an alternative, the same device may perform all these functions. Load balancing between HSM modules assigned to the same function uses the round-robin algorithm. This also provides a fail-over mechanism should any of the redundant HSM's fail. SmartVista supports the following PIN generation and verification algorithms:

and also PIN block formats 01 and 03.

CVV, CVC and PVV generation, translation and verification are supported both for Acquirer and Issuer transactions. DES and 3DES encryption is also supported on all interfaces: ATM, POS, Network, and ePOS.

In addition to all security checks required for EMV card transactions, SmartVista allows flexible configuration of Result Scripts that are sent together with the transaction response to provide additional card control capabilities.

To provide authentication of ATM and POS messages, SmartVista uses ANSI X.9.19 Message Authentication Codes. MAC's are generated using MAC keys that are set up from a special SmartVista Front-End GUI form.