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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Man.aging. Hardware Devices.and Drivers

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Figure 2.16 The Hardware Profile/Configuration Recovery menu.

Managing Card Services

Card services play an important role in Windows Server 2003 for security

purposes due to the compact size and tamper-resistant qualities of today's

high-tech card-like devices. Support for card services includes PC Cards as

peripheral devices and smart-card technology for logon authentication. The

operating system supports both the PC Card (formerly known as PCMCIA)

standard as well as the CardBus (PC Card 32) standard. The many benefits

of these devices include their convenient size, low power requirements, and

support for the PnP standard. The CardBus specification is a combination of

the PC Card 16 standard and the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)

standard. This combination provides 32-bit performance and the PCI bus in

a compact, portable package. You can find several types of PC Cards that are

often used in mobile computers: network adapter cards, hard drive cards,

modem cards, wireless network cards, and so on.

Smart Cards

Support for smart card technology is fully integrated into Windows Server

2003. Smart cards play an important role in Windows Server 2003's Public

Key Infrastructure (PKI) security architecture for logon authentication and

other security-related services. Smart cards are credit cardsize devices that

have integrated circuits built into them. These electronic cards securely store

both public and private encryption keys and also perform cryptographic

functions such as digital-signature and key-exchange operations.