Skip to main content

Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates from Canonical and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Thank you for contacting us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. Close

An error occurred while submitting your form. Please try again or file a bug report. Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Alex Cattle
on 29 March 2020

Smart cards login on Ubuntu


Smart cards have proliferated and are now everywhere, from work ID badges to credit cards and passports. For example, the United States Federal Government uses smart cards to control access to federal facilities and information systems because they offer an extra layer of security and respond to strict government guidelines. If used in a company, these will provide identity confirmation, verification that data has not been changed, and confidentiality via encryption.

This whitepaper will provide information on how to configure Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to operate with a smart card to provide multi-factor authentication when logging into the system both locally and remotely. For the purposes of this whitepaper, a PIVKey smart card is used as an example since they are readily accessible and contain a few basic credentials.

Read our documentation or download the whitepaper to learn more including:

  • The software and hardware prerequisites needed for smart card configuration.
  • How to set up your smart card and configure it to support smart card logins.
  • How to configure SSH smart card login.

Download the whitepaper by filling in the form below:

Related posts


Carlos Bravo
28 August 2025

Ubuntu Pro Minimal 22.04 LTS with CIS hardening is now generally available on AWS

Canonical announcements Article

August 28, 2025 – We are excited to announce the general availability of Ubuntu Pro Minimal 22.04 LTS with CIS hardening, a new variant of Ubuntu designed for organizations that require tight security controls, minimal attack surface, and out-of-the-box compliance. This new offering combines the efficiency of Minimal Ubuntu with the enter ...


Nicholas Morris
26 August 2025

Generating allow-lists with DNS monitoring on LXD

DevOps Article

Allow-listing web traffic – blocking all web traffic that has not been pre-approved – is a common practice in highly sensitive environments. It is also a challenge for developers and system administrators working in those environments. In this blog, we’ll cover an easy way to mitigate this challenge by using LXD to generate allow-lists.  ...


Jehudi
22 August 2025

A complete security view for every Ubuntu LTS VM on Azure

Compliance Article

Azure’s Update Manager now shows missing Ubuntu Pro updates for all Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) releases: 18.04, 20.04, 22.04 and 24.04. The feature was first introduced for only 18.04 during its move to Expanded Security Maintenance. With this addition, Azure highlights where Ubuntu LTS instances would benefit from Expanded Security M ...