Military seeks to reduce use of Common Access Cards

The Defense Department is seeking to cut back on the use of a “smart” ID card that has long been used by military personnel and contractors.

The Common Access Cards (CAC) are now used as “proof of identity and DoD affiliation to facilitate access to DoD facilities and systems,” according to a Pentagon website. They can be used to gain access to the department’s network and as a verification measure to sign emails. 

{mosads}Terry Halvorsen, DOD’s Chief Information Officer, announced a two-year plan to replace many uses of the cards with what he suggested would be a mixture of biometrics and behavioral analysis technology.

“Frankly, CAC cards are not agile enough to do what we want,” Halvorsen said at the Brocade Federal Forum in Washington on Tuesday. “We may still use them to get into a building or something, but we will not use them on our information systems.”

He noted that it issuing ID cards is difficult “when people are dropping mortar shells on you and you need to get in your systems.”

The DOD first tested machine readable access cards 20 years ago. By 2011, the department was issuing more than 10,000 Common Access Cards a day.