Smartcards keep kids' site secure

Children's charity The Who Cares? Trust has developed a £2m smartcard access system and interactive website to provide secure and safe internet environment for young people in care.

The CareZone site, launched last week, is a self-contained site that pulls together a range of services including communication tools such as email and chat facilities, secure online storage and educational material. It uses an innovative smartcard and 'sleeve' system to control access.

When a young person logs into the CareZone site using their smartcard number, they are issued on-screen with an eight-digit 'challenge.' This number is typed into the electronic sleeve with the card loaded into it, followed by a PIN code. The sleeve then generates another eight-digit number, which is typed into CareZone and access is granted if this is recognised as a valid response.

The system avoids the impracticality of relying on PCs with attached smartcard readers, says Who Cares? Trust director of CareZone Jan Roszkowski.

'The service management implications of using smartcard readers were horrendous because there are literally thousands of PCs children could be using,' he said.

'The sleeve system is one of the simplest ways to providing access to a secure network. The beauty of it is neither the PIN number nor any other sensitive information actually gets transmitted and all the sleeve does is read the card,' he said.

The Trust is working with 35 local authorities to issue cards and sleeves to children. Participating councils are given a notebook PC with two card readers and a staff card to authorise new CareZone accounts.

Around 6,500 young people are expected to use the scheme in the first eight months and the trust aims to have a total of 60 local authorities involved by the end of the year.

Co-ordinating the different project partners was the biggest challenge, says Roszkowski.

'The project side within each organisation is more or less straightforward because they just have their piece to do - it's getting all the pieces to fit together that's the hard part,' he said.