1장. Understanding smart card authentication

Authentication based on smart cards is an alternative to passwords. You can store user credentials on a smart card in the form of a private key and a certificate, and special software and hardware is used to access them. Place the smart card into a reader or a USB port and supply the PIN code for the smart card instead of providing your password.

This section describes what a smart card is and how smart card authentication works. It describes the tools that you can use to read and manipulate smart card content. It also provides sample use cases and describes the setup of both the IdM server and IdM client for smart card authentication.