The third potential value to a company is the encryption and key
generation capabilities that smart cards have. Licensing agreements for
public key technology are typically much less restrictive when the
technology is confined to a physical device. By storing the user's
private keys in secure card storage, and using card encryption
capabilities to generate authentication information from the keys, the
encryption technology need not be implemented in the host system. The
cards' ability to generate random numbers may also be useful as a
source for keys.