Entrust has announced it will help the Danish National Police (Rigspolitiet) migrate Denmark’s e-passport infrastructure to the Extended Access Control (EAC) standard – the EU’s newest standard for biometrics and e-passport security.

Entrust will work with its partner Nets, a Danish technology vendor specializing in payments, to provide 670,000 EAC e-passports to Danish citizens on the initial roll out. Entrust says that eventually all Danish citizens who apply through the Danish National Police will be able to receive a new passport.

According to Entrust, the EAC protocol is designed to ensure that only authorized inspection systems are able to access biometric data – iris scan or fingerprint – stored on the contactless chip of an e-passport. The specification describes an architecture enabling cross-jurisdiction passport inspection systems to authenticate the contactless chip as well as the biometric data on a passport.

Entrust will deploy its public key infrastructure (PKI) architecture for the EAC project, including the Country Signing Certification Authority, Country Verifying Certification Authority, Document Verifying Certification Authority and full Single Point of Contact capabilities.

Entrust, who replaced the initial provider of Denmark’s Basic Access Control (BAC) trust infrastructure, also provides its PKI technology for Denmark’s national ID, of which 3.5 million have been issued to date.