The Common Access Card, also colloquially referred to as the CAC (often called CAC card, due to what is informally known as RAS syndrome), is a smart card about the size of a credit card. It is the standard identification for active-duty military personnel, Selected Reserve, United States Department of Defense (DoD) civilian employees, and eligible contractor personnel. It is also the principal card used to enable physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and it provides access to defense computer networks and systems. It also serves as an identification card under the Geneva Conventions (esp. the Third Geneva Convention). The CAC satisfies two-factor authentication: something that belongs to the user, and something only known to the user. And, the CAC covers the bases for digital signature and data encryption technology: authentication, integrity and non-repudiation.
The CAC is a controlled item. As of 2008, DoD has issued over 17 million smart cards. This number includes reissues to accommodate changes in name, rank, or status and to replace lost or stolen cards. As of the same date, approximately 3.5 million unterminated or active CACs are in circulation. DoD has deployed an issuance infrastructure at over 1000 sites in more than 25 countries around the world and is rolling out more than one million card readers and associated middleware.
Read more about Common Access Card: Issuance, Design, Usage, Common Problems
Famous quotes containing the words common, access and/or card:
“Throughout the 1980’s, we did hear too much about individual gain and the ethos of selfishness and greed. We did not hear enough about how to be a good member of a community, to define the common good and to repair the social contract. And we also found that while prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)