Smart cards and other physical authentication tokens improve upon basic password-based authentication by requiring users ...

Smart cards and other physical authentication tokens improve upon basic password-based authentication by requiring users to supplement something they know—a password or personal identification number (PIN)—with something they have—the smart card or token. An obstacle to smart card deployments has been the cost and difficulty in managing smart card certificates. However, issuing and managing certificates with a Windows certification authority (CA) can be an efficient and cost-effective solution for deploying smart cards.