Why Should We Use Smartcards?

Windows 7 and other 3rd party softwares also use Smart cards for a variety of reasons including: authentication, access control, and for single sign-on for many different systems.

Most of the Smartcards don't allow the private key to be exported and it is difficult to remove. These products are often used for single sign-on. Single sign-on means that one sign-on is used for many independent systems like using your smartcard in logging on to your building, in Windows and in Unix systems.

One problem with these types of cards is when you let your friends or family use it making them access to your system without your approval but this can be avoided because of Multi Factor Authentication used by Windows 7. Multi Factor Authentication means having two or more systems are for authentication.