Articles
RSSBoeing Reveals More About Its Tag Plans By Mary Catherine O'Connor
March 14, 2006
•Article: RFID And Boeing
Copyright 2006, RFID Journal LLC.
Reprinted with permission. For more information, visit www.rfidjournal.com
At a meeting of the Air Transport Association's Automated Identification and Data Capture Task Force, Boeing Commercial Airplanes announced updates to its initiative to use passive UHF RFID tags on parts to build the Boeing Dreamliner. The Everett, Wash., manufacturer will introduce its new family of passenger jets in 2008 (see Boeing's Flight Plan for Dreamliner Tags).
One agenda item of the meeting, which took place Nov. 15 in Chicago, was to address the security of data encoded to the tags. Kenneth Porad, Boeing's program manager for automated identification programs, says that during the gathering, his company announced a threat and risk analysis it is performing to determine how the safety of airplanes might be compromised by tag data being either read or altered by nefarious parties.
Porad and his team received input regarding data security from the airline representatives attending the meeting. He says he asked attendees the following question: "I don't even know if this is possible, but what if someone with an RFID-enabled Nokia phone read a tag on a part used in his seat?" Although the airline representatives were unable to point to specific concerns about such a seemingly benign reading, they did express discomfort about the prospect, according to Porad. He says one possible method of ensuring only authorized parties read the tags would involve authenticating the reading transactions by entering a PIN into a keyboard on the interrogator. The Boeing team conducting the threat and risk analysis will present its findings at the next meeting of the task force, to be held some time in January.
Mary Catherine O'Connor is the associate editor of RFID Journal and RFIDJournal.com. She provides a wide variety of news and feature stories for both the Web site and print magazine. Prior to joining RFID Journal in late 2004, O'Connor served as an associate editor with Modern Media Partners, the media and events firm that produces many of RFID Journal's conferences and educational seminars, including the annual RFID Journal LIVE! conference. Before working for Modern Media, she worked as an editor and writer for a range of magazines and Web sites devoted to adventure travel and outdoor recreation.
•Article: RFID And Boeing
