ETSI’s Technical Committee on Secure Element Technologies (TC SET) is responsible for developing and maintaining specifications for Secure Elements (SEs) and their integration in a multi-application capable environment, as well as the secure provisioning of services making use of SEs.
The scope of our work addresses use of the SE in telecommunication systems as well as for Machine-to-Machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoT) communications. This comprises the interface, procedures and protocol specifications between the SE and entities (remote or local) used in its management. It also includes interfaces, procedures and protocol specifications used between such entities for the secure provisioning and operation of services making use of the SE.
Secure elements (such as smart cards) are a tamper-resistant dedicated platform, consisting of hardware and software. They are capable of securely hosting applications and their confidential and cryptographic data, and providing a secure application execution environment, e.g. the UICC or SSP.
The UICC is a smart card that conforms to the specifications written and maintained by the ETSI Smart Card Platform project.
The SSP is a new security platform open for multiple applications with various physical interfaces and form factors.
Secure Elements – such as smart cards – are micro-processor equipped tokens, able to process and store a diverse range of applications and data. They are used as credit cards, banking cards in general, ID cards and especially as Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs) in mobile telecommunications, with several billion SIMs and entering the market every year. While the early SIMs were developed by an ETSI committee preceding TC SET, today’s SIMcompromises an underlying platform – the UICC – developed by TC SET, with the application developed by 3GPP on top of this platform.
Today not all SIMs take the form of a “card”. The size of SIMs has also shrunk over the years. Some come in the form of Surface Mounted Devices (SMDs) or even just chips that may be embedded in mobile phones, smartwatches and IoT devices. Secure Elements can also be incorporated into System on Chip (SoC) solutions. Thus TC SET is now standardising Secure Elements of which smart cards are just a special case.
ETSI’s SCP (Smart Card Platform) Technical Committee was originally formed in April 2000. It was renamed TC SET in 2022 to provide a focal point for the standardisation of a common IC card platform for mobile telecommunication systems. This allowed the participation of companies not necessarily involved in GSM & 3GPP standards.
The main topic in the early days of TC SET was thus to separate the underlying security platform, what became known as the UICC, from the application itself, e.g., the SIM. The aim was to create a series of specifications for a Smart Card Platform on which other industry sectors can base their system-specific applications to achieve compatibility between all applications resident on the Secure Element.
The nearly 50 specifications ETSI has developed to achieve this purpose are generic and application-agnostic. As such they can be used for any application designed to reside on the UICC. They have thus found their way into other applications such as ID management and the contactless interface specified by TC SET is used in financial services. For instance, our core platform specification defining the interface between a UICC and a terminal is also one of the mandated specifications for the smart meter work item of EC and EFTA (M/441). As one of the very few standardisation bodies TC SET also developed test specifications for its core documents to help to achieve developing interoperable implementations.
TC SET continues to maintain and upgrade UICC specifications for the Smart Card and Secure Element Platform. Current work in this ongoing process is the use of the I3C® interface and the definition of new smaller form factors.
The origin of the UICC dates back a few decades. Though the UICC still satisfies the (security) requirements of today’s world, TC SET started a couple of years ago to think about a new security platform, the next generation Smart Secure Platform (SSP). Everything was to be re-considered, from architecture and form factor to transport protocol and file system, never forgetting the overall performance and the ecosystem it operates in.
Published specifications for the SSP cover requirements, general technical characteristics, the integration of the Secure Element into a System on Chip (SoC) solution and, as the first protocols between the Smart Secure Platform and the outside world, the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and I3C® interface. As for the UICC, TC SET has developed test specifications for all of these.
Trust and privacy in IoT are crucial market drivers for IoT and applications relying on those. As such, our new-generation Smart Secure Platform will contribute significantly to achieving these goals.
The main responsibilities of TC SET REQ are:
The main responsibilities of TC SET TEC are:
The main responsibilities of TC SET TEST are:
Smart Cards; Card Application Toolkit (CAT) (Release 15)
Smart Cards; Card Application Toolkit (CAT) (Release 16)
Smart Cards; Connection Oriented Service API for the Java Card(TM) platform (Release 19)
Secure Elements; Additional UICC form factors and environmental conditions; Physical and logical characteristics (Release 18)
For participation inquiries or further information, please contact: [email protected]
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