gsa certification and new features

www.gamingstandards.com

GSA Certification

And New Features

•Marc McDermott, Technical Director


GSA PLATINUM MEMBERS


What is GSA?

• The Gaming Standards Association (GSA) is an international trade association that creates benefits for gaming manufacturers, suppliers, operators and regulators. We facilitate the identification, definition, development, promotion, and implementation of open standards to enable innovation, education, and communication for the benefit of the entire industry.


What Does GSA Do?

GSA Develops Communication Standards – GSA develops Communication standards designed

specifically for the Gaming industry.

– GSA does not develop Regulatory standards

– GSA does not design gaming applications

– GSA does not write gaming software


GSA Certification

What Is GSA Certification?

– GSA Certification is program designed to provide assurance to regulators and operators that the communications will work as expected.

– GSA Certification is not Regulatory certification


Who conducts the Certification?

GSA Certification is Conducted by GSA Recognized Test Laboratories

• Minimum criteria is ISO 17025 accreditation with a GSA scope

• Must be recognized by GSA Board as suitable

• Two labs have successfully completed the requirements


How Does GSA Certification Work?

Certification is for Specific Functional Groups• A functional group is a set of G2S or S2S commands that

provide support for a particular business function– Redeem a voucher (G2S)– Download software (G2S) – Issue a Jackpot (S2S)– Void a comp (S2S)

• Certification is for specific a specific protocol version. – S2S 1.3.1, – G2S 1.0.3, – etc.


What GSA Certification Looks Like

GUEST FULL CLASS/BUSINESS FUNCTIONAL GROUP

Communications Class

Communications point to point - (mandatory)

Communications - Multicast

Cabinet Class

Meters Class

Voucher Class

Voucher – issue voucher

Voucher – redeem voucher

Handpay

How to Specify Your Requirements: GSA Certification Checklist


Example of a Functional Group

Functional Group

From - to Request Response

Communications - Multicast

EGM-Host getMcastKeyUpdate mcastKeyUpdate

Host-EGM joinMcast joinMcastAck

leaveMcast leaveMcastAck

getMcastList mcastList

mcastKeyUpdate mcastKeyUpdateAck

•The commands that make up the Multicast Functional Group


How Does this Work?

• GSA Certification Process• GSA Committees decide on the certification criteria.

• Testing agencies report passing test results to GSA

• GSA issues a certificate and posts the certificate on the GSA website

• GSA Certificate Identifies the functional groups tested

• GSA does not post non-passing test results


Is Everything tested?

• All functional groups are tested

• All functional groups must meet the requirements to be certified.

• All passing results will be posted on the GSA website


The Certification Program Status

• Where is Certification now?• G2S Certification for 1.0.3 is available for EGMs• S2S Certification is available for versions 1.2.6 and 1.3.1

• Certification for G2S hosts is under development– Expect a program for Summer of 2009


GSA Certification Feedback Loop?

The most important part of the certification program is the GSA Certification feedback loop – Your Participation is vital to the success of the Certification Program


Where Do My Needs Fit In

• The Certification program will be adjusted to meet the needs of the industry– Pass/fail criteria will be adjusted for business requirements– Functional groups will be adjusted to meet business requirements

• Input from Operators, Regulators, Manufacturers, and Test Labs all make the program better

• Bugs found are brought forward and corrections are made – Adjustments in protocol – Adjustments in test procedures– Adjustment in test scripts


How Do I Benefit from Certification?

• Everyone wins with GSA Certification– Operators have an assurance that communications are

correctly implemented– Regulators can start with their regulatory compliance

without communication errors– Regulators and Operators can report problems with

Certified products– Manufacturers can use certification as an indication of

their commitment to proper implementation


Certification Questions?

• Questions?

•Marc McDermott

•[email protected]


Where We are Going

What’s Next???


New Features – What’s in Store

• The G2S and S2S protocols are being implemented and deployed in the field.

• The GDS protocol is taking hold as well

• The basics are done – now it’s time to push the communications envelope


What Areas are We Looking At?

• GSA will be working on providing unprecedented communication capability– Enhance the Customer experience

– Allow for communications between all the business units in a casino

– Provide new ways to communicate with your players

– Provide new ways to provide comps to your players

– Provide new ways to find new players.


Custom Ticketing

• The GDS protocol supports download of custom templates.

• Templates can be designed to customize the tickets and coupons printed at the EGM or elsewhere in the property (cashier station, kiosk, etc.)


Custom Ticketing

• Tickets are printed from a template stored on the printer• In GDS a ticket template may be formatted into regions• Regions contain the text that may be sent to the printer with

each print command• Regions allow for custom text to be printed

Example Template #1


Custom Ticketing

• To print the ticket, send the print command with the region information

printTicket templateIndex = 1

printRegion regionIndex =1

regionData = “Your Tribe’s Resort and Casino” printRegion regionIndex = 2 regionData = “1234-5678-9012-3456” printRegion regionIndex = 3 regionData = “$25.50” etc. etc. etc.


Custom Ticketing

• The resulting ticket being a custom ticket with the patron’s name on it.

• The Player’s name was sent in region 6 and was acquired from the player’s loyalty card


Custom Ticketing

• The advantage to regulators:• Easier to detect suspicious patterns

(if cards are required)• More security

– Eliminate stolen or copied tickets– ID can be used for redeeming offline or

high value tickets

• If Mr Schlump cashes the ticket… Pay the ticket


Custom Ticketing

• If someone else cashes the ticket ….

Maybe you ask some more questions


Custom Ticketing

• The advantage for Operators is enhanced customer experience

• Personalized tickets provide more player recognition

• GDS’ UTF-16 support can enable printing of the special non-ASCII characters (eventually including all characters) providing a correct representation of the player’s name in the player’s native language


Custom Ticketing

• Regulatory and Operator Questions– Does the Player Tracking System communicate with the

voucher system?– What Character set do you need?– Do the existing templates in the printer support the fields

you want to print?– Can you download new templates?– Can you send the custom information to your printer?


Expand Your Customer Base

Expand your customer base through cooperative marketing• Partner outside your jurisdiction

• Create patron loyalty through cooperative advertising and points transfer

• The capability exists in S2S to support this feature



• As customers travel, the idea is to provide them a reason to pick your operation

• Identify new opportunities for your customers

• Let your partners identify new customers for you



• S2S allows for points transfer rates – for example, 2 of your points is worth 1 of my points.

• Configuration options allow for custom tuning of the exchange rate for specific partners and specific customers.

• The communications support for this capability currently exists in the S2S protocol



• Regulatory and Operator Questions– Is this legal in your jurisdiction?– What are the tax ramifications, if any, for the partner

casinos?– Who controls the exchange rate?– Is the communications link secure between the partners?– How is the patron database managed?– How much access is granted and how much information

is exposed?


Offline Validation

• Vouchers/Tickets make casinos more efficient

• Customers prefer tickets over coins

• However, our reliance on tickets is such that:– When the ticket system is down – The floor is down.


Offline Validation

• A ticketing system that is up 99% of the time is still down for more than 87 hours/year

• A ticket system that is up 95% is down for more than 18 days/year.

• When the ticket system is offline, tickets printed:– Can be copied – Cannot be validated by the system– In some cases, regulation prohibits issuing or cashing

offline vouchers


Offline Validation

• The Problem: There is no reasonable way to validate offline tickets with the current system.

• However the G2S based system provides a secure method of validating offline vouchers

• The G2S method has been deemed satisfactory for redeeming offline vouchers/tickets by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (Tech Std 3.050(11))


Offline Validation

• G2S Offline Validation is based on a secret seed/validation ID pair, the unique EGM number and the dollar value of the voucher

• The secret seed and validation Identification number are sent to the EGM and stored.

• The number of stored number pairs is a configurable item and determines the number of offline vouchers that may be generated.


Offline Validation

• To generate an offline voucher, the EGM ID, validation Id, secret seed and the ticket amount are made into a single long string of characters.

• The long string is run through an MD5 HASH algorithm

• The result is the 32 character Authentication ID


Offline Validation

• Generating an Offline Voucher


Offline Validation

• For an offline redeemable voucher, the validation number, the EGM ID, and the value of the voucher and the authentication number are printed on the ticket

• The secret seed IS NOT printed on the voucher


Offline Validation

• To Redeem an offline voucher, the information on the ticket: EGM ID, validation ID, Dollar Value of the voucher, and the authentication ID are entered at a cashier station

• The cashier station retrieves the secret seed that corresponds to the validation ID on the voucher

• The cashier station re-runs the MD5 HASH.• If the resulting authentication ID matches the one

on the ticket, the ticket is valid and may be paid.


Offline Validation

• Redeem a ticket


Offline Validation

• Regulatory and Operator Concerns– Are offline tickets/vouchers allowed in your jurisdiction?– Is there a limit to the number of offline vouchers that may

be printed.– Is your cashier station capable of redeeming offline

vouchers?


Questions?

• Questions?

•Marc McDermott

•[email protected]

gsa certification and new features

Documents

gsa certification work

gsa certification feedback

gsa certification checklist

gsa gsa issues

g2s certification

certification criteria

regulatory certification

egmss2s certification