UML
Abbreviation for "Unified Modeling Language"


UMTS
Abbreviation for "Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems". UMTS is to replace the current GSM system - used by the Telekom (D1) and Mannesmann (D2) – and is a compromise between the suggestions by Ericsson and Nokia (“W-DCMA” group) on the one hand and Siemens, Bosch, Motorola, Alcatel, Nortel, Sony, and Italtel (“UMTS" alliance) on the other hand. At the end of February 1998, the ITSI agreed to this suggestion for the transmission standard between end-user devices and sender stations.

UMTS provides for two core components: Radio network and carrier network. The radio network consists of the mobile devices and the base station between which the communication takes place by radio transmission. The carrier network connects the base stations together and also connects to the ISDN network and the Internet. With a considerably larger bandwidth of 5 MHz as with GSM (200 kHz) and the CDMA transmission procedure (code division multiple access), any contents (multi-media applications, downloads from the internet, and video conferences) can be transmitted with the high transmission rate of 2 Mb/second. The UMTS radio network is divided by specification into hierarchical supply levels that permit differing transfer speeds.

• At the macro level, this is at least 144 KB/second at a maximum travel speed of 500 km/hour.
• At the micro level, this is still guaranteed to be 384 KB/second at a maximum speed of 120 km/hour.
• In the “pico zone”, this is 2 MB/second at a maximum speed of 10 km/hour–this is the "quasi stationary operation”. UMTS is therefore up to 30 times faster than ISDN (64 KB per second) and up to 200 times faster than today’s GSM cell phones (9.6 KB per second).

Unicode
Unicode is an extension of the well-known ASCII character code. In contrast to the 7-bit ASCII code, Unicode employs 16 bits for coding. This allows the characters of the most widely used languages of the world to be supported. The first 256 Unicode characters are identical to the ISO 8859-1 ASCII characters. The WWW site for the Unicode consortium is [Unicode].


User authentication with 3 factors
Biometrics are used for user authentication as needed for many applications in daily life. Contrary to knowledge-based user authentication (1^st factor) – such as a PIN or password – and user authentication with objects (2^nd factor) – such as a key or smart card – as well as a person reference, biometrics offers a personal connection (3^rd factor). PINs, passwords, and keys can be forgotten, Lost, worn out, stolen, or passed on – but not biometric features. The user’s own body is the identification, the biological password. The biometric user authentication increases the overall security of systems.


USIM (universal subscriber identity module)
The Universal Subscriber Identity Module is a difference named for the UMTS-specific smart card. This can be in the normal credit card size ID-1 or also as a small plug-in card in ID-000. The USIM carries the secret authentication information for the network operator and also contains additional user-specific data such as telephone numbers for the mobile telephone.

Varifeye
Brand name from G&D for a new banknote feature comprising BN paper with a transparent foil placed over a hole. Depending on the design, this can fulfil various security functions.


Vending machine terminal
A special payment terminal suited for installation in automatic vendors, such as beverage machines, ticket dispensers, or cigarette vending machines.


View, direct/reflected light, transmitted light, UV light
Banknote paper can be inspected by being viewed under various lighting conditions. Direct or reflected light means the note is lying on an opaque surface in front of the viewer. Transmitted light means the note is being viewed against the light. Banknotes can also be viewed under ultraviolet (UV) lamps to reveal special features. Different security features can be revealed depending on the method of viewing.


Virgin card
A card that has not yet been implanted with a chip or visually or electronically personalized. A virgin card is essentially a printed, non-specific card body, as used in the mass production of cards.

Virtual Machine (VM)
A software simulation of a microprocessor, usually having its own opcodes for machine instructions as well as a simulated address space. It allows software to be generated that is independent of the features of specific hardware. For instance, the virtual address space of a VM can be many times larger than the address space provided by the hardware. In the Java environment, the closed environment of the VM is often called the sandbox.


Volatile memory
A type of memory (e.g. RAM) that only retains its contents as long there is a power supply.


VPN
Abbreviation for "Virtual Private Network". In the course of the Internet boom, virtual private networks found solid footing in the infrastructure of corporate networks. A (company's) internal data transmission is performed over an existing public network; the data packages are encrypted for transmission. The key pairs are only known to the sender and the recipient. The encrypted data packages are normally packed in TCP/IP packages. This procedure is called “TCP/IP tunnelling”. This also permits the transmission ot NetBIOS or IPX data packages over the Internet. See also: Remote data transmission (RDT), Encryption, TCP/IP