Francotyp Postalia (Germany)

Die Urbanisierung schreitet schnell voran. Um die schnell wachsenden Stadte nachhaltig entwickeln zu konnen, mussen diese „smart“ werden. Digitale Technologien verbessern die Infrastrukturen und Angebote einer Stadt signifikant. Allerdings wachst dadurch das Datenvolumen stark. Es entstehen neue Anforderungen an den Daten-Traffic, die Performance, Sicherheit und Verfugbarkeit von Netzen. Erforderlich sind Kommunikationslosungen, die nicht nur fur eine zuverlassige und hoch performante Datenkommunikation sorgen, sondern daruber hinaus die Cyber-Bedrohungen, denen intelligente Stadte aufgrund der zunehmenden Vernetzung sowie Digitalisierung ausgesetzt sind, wesentlich reduzieren.

PC franking systems allow customers to download postage value into their PCs and to print postage value onto envelopes or mailing labels by using regular desktop printers connected to their PCs. In emerging standards, such as the IBIP program of the US postal services, the resulting imprints are called indicia, and they are printed as 2-D bar codes that are easy and reliable to scan while passing through the mail delivery system. In contrast to the IBIP program, which requires a tamper responsive postal security device for each customer, we propose a pure software solution for PC franking systems that is more secure for the postal services, gives more privacy to the customers and has the potential of being much cheaper than any IBIP compliant franking system. In contrast to existing PC-franking products that require no hardware postal security device, our solution works off-line. Customers are not required to be online while printing indicia. Our solution operates an existing offine e-cash scheme over certain elliptic curves rather than over finite fields.