FRAC card featured at Summer Breeze

The departments of Defense and Homeland Security are making sure first responders are never again stopped a mile from the Pentagon and forced to walk to a disaster. That is what happened to one key federal anti-terrorism official after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A Virginia State trooper stopped the official as he was trying to fulfill on-site responsibilities at the Pentagon. “He had to walk the rest of the way,” Craig Wilson, a smartcard expert with the Department of Homeland Security, said on July 20. Officials are hoping to minimize such difficulties through the use of a First Responder Authentication Credentials (FRAC) identification card, which was a key component in the July 19 Summer Breeze Exercise. The FRAC card is encoded with critical data that lets commanders at the scene authenticate the responder’s credentials using a wireless handheld device.
(Federal Computer Week story; DHS FRAC Web site)