CFCA -- the China next payment infrastruture

There was a news about 16 China Banks released a press release about a coordination framewrok between banks against online fraud (網上銀行反欺詐聯動機制)

The banks will share their fraud information with China Financial Certification Authority CFCA, which was found by the banks in year 2000. CFCA is a certificate authority (i.e. a PKI service provider) and from ChinaTechNew.com 25 banks uses their certificates in 2005.

If this alliance is successful and continues its development, I think CFCA has the potential to be the center of China payment network. A secure PKI is important, especially for using client-side authentications. When the banks establish a cross-banks PKI process and agreements, the payment network may function a bit like VISA in plastic card business. For China, the development and innovations are unlimited.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Risk on Radio

This morning I joined a talk show on RTHK and discussed risk of usnig credit cards. Media attendtion is high after the recent security breach at Cardsystems. The story was uncovered on 17 June 2005, but after 6 days it is still lingering on. WHY? First, I believe this incident is huge in terms of people affected. 40 million card numbers were lost. Secondly, it was uncovered on SAT. I am not joking. One of my lectures in a Crisis Management class told his student in class that when reporters are hungry for news, even lost of a penny can be headline news. On Saturday, when reporters unable to find new story, a incident like this one will be reported by every newspaper. Back to the talk show, there were few people called in. And one mentioned that when he visited a Indian online shop and was diverted to a HSBC credit card website. This website asked him to enter his personal information like birthday and passport number. He worried this may be fraudulent website and asked for advice. As
Read more

One source of poverty

A study focused on the effects of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion. Although I have not read the whole report nor the article confirmed the research method is scientific, I agree with the author that "found that one of the greatest effects of a Wal-Mart opening is the closing of mom-and-pop-type operations."
Read more

Root Certificate update and software design

Recently, a member of PISA (also called Anthony) noticed that when using HK Post office website, FireFox displayed security warning saying the digital certificate used bu HK Post is invalid. A detailed study by other PISA members showed that the reason HK Post (once is the root CA for HK) used their own root certificate. Root certificates are usually shipped with the browser installation and HK Post digital certificate was not included in their default software package. Hong Kong Post setup a page to teach users on how to add the root certificate to most used browsers . However, how many users know this link, willing to follow or could follow the instructions !! It is quite clear that currently most browsers develop and distributed by US company or US-based community. The interest of adding other root certificates is likely lower than adding new functions. Having said that, FireFox developers have a process to add Root Certificates to their software package, for example this li
Read more