- #Alcor micro usb smart card reader driver windows 10 update#
- #Alcor micro usb smart card reader driver windows 10 windows 10#
#Alcor micro usb smart card reader driver windows 10 windows 10#
If you want to be secure, you should be using Windows 10 Pro with BitLocker or another disk encryption solution in any event. If you do not already have a Windows domain to which all devices authenticate by password, there are further steps to go through, including upgrading all devices with Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro (domain join is unavailable in the Home version of Windows). However, this is a fairly complex thing to do correctly, especially when it comes to securing the root certificate of the certificate authority and ensuring the purposes of your certificate authority are appropriately constrained so as not to introduce security risks. If you have a Windows Server, this has all the software you need to set up a local certificate authority and authentication infrastructure for certificate authentication of users (including authentication of other services using RADIUS - notably including login to Wi-Fi networks). You can also login to Windows via smart card if you have the right back-end infrastructure. However, you can use the smart card functionality of all the current YubiKeys other than the U2F only key (that's the 4 series, NEO and the FIPS range) to secure all manner of services and applications including VPN applications. My applications for these devices are all about securing trusted credentials used once the system is up and running. You can do so many different things with a YubiKey.
#Alcor micro usb smart card reader driver windows 10 update#
There are relatively few private individuals who use smart cards with computers, though most bank cards are now smart cards.Īs you rightly note, Paul, the various card readers tend to disconnect from the system when no card is inserted, so it is often necessary to insert a card to update the drivers. The Yubikey also supports U2F (the security key standard used by Google and other companies on the web), is a secure store for OTP credentials that are used for two-factor authentication on many web sites (the sort that are issued as a QR code and result in a 6 or 8 digit number) and has a proprietary one time password system used by web sites such as LastPass for two factor authentication. I carry my personal certificate for S/MIME e-mail and my PGP credentials in a Yubikey NEO it is much more convenient for me to use a USB device rather than require smart card readers on all the systems I use. For example, you can use most built in smart card readers with a PGP card if you choose to carry PGP credentials in that format. There are other smart cards used in various systems. The latest CACs - perhaps all current CACs - conform to the Personal Identity Verification (PIV FIPS 201) standard. Common Access Card is a smart card issued by the US Department of Defence.