DISA explores alternatives to Common Access Card

Steve Wallace, Technical Director of the Development & Business Center at DISA and Jeremy Corey, Chief of the Cyber Innovation Office at DISA, detail their efforts to ‘augment’ the Common Access Card with modern tech, and the experimentation they’re doing with biometrics.   The Department of Defense is looking to implement alternatives to the Common Access Card, the authentication tech that has secured Pentagon computers since the mid-1990s. The Defense Information Systems Agency has been researching ways to modernize the CAC for the past two years, and develop security systems more compatible with 21^st century computing. Steve Wallace, Technical Director of Development & Business Center at DISA, says that they are teaming up with commercial hardware manufacturers to produce an adaptable solution   “We have to continuously evolve, which is why we feel it is key to integrate in with commercial solutions and that was one of our design tenets from the start,” said Wallace. “If we do that, it will naturally grow. We don’t want a government one-off that is too expensive, that doesn’t last very long because the rest of the world just moves on.”   Jeremy Corey, Chief of the Cyber Innovation Office at DISA, said that it’s important to remember that they are looking to supplement the CAC, not just replace it. “The technology behind the scenes that we’ve invested in over the last 15 years, we want to continue to leverage, but in new form factors,” said Corey.