The NTAG® 424 DNA tag contains powerful authentication capabilities, which are based on the secure symmetric cryptography. The dynamic URL feature is certainly one of the most recognized ways to authenticate the tag. However, it’s worth remembering that there is a different, yet stronger way of doing so, called mutual authentication. This article will provide the comparison of the two methods mentioned, focusing on the pros and cons of each method.

While looking at NTAG® 424 DNA offers, you have probably seen them in different variants and form factors. Let’s quickly explain these variations here.

NTAG® 213 is a very cost-effective way of deploying simple NFC stickers or cards. However, this series only supports ISO 14443-3 protocol and not ISO 7816-4 (APDU). For that reason, you might need to take some extra steps in order to use a PC/SC reader with these tags.

NFC technology is extremely powerful, although it’s still not widely deployed in any area except simple access control and credit card payments. NTAG® 424 DNA tag is a game-changer, because it’s both cheap and intentionally designed for integration with web applications. Here is how the overall process of integration should look like.

Both NXP’s NTAG® 213 (also other variants: NTAG® 215, NTAG® 216) and NTAG® 424 DNA can be programmed in such a way that they will generate a different, distinguishable URL on each tap. The main difference between NTAG® 213 series and NTAG® 424 DNA is that the latter one supports cryptography. What does that mean?