LONDON, Infosecurity Europe - 29 April 2003: Baltimore Technologies (London: BLM), a global leader in e-security, today announced that it has successfully tested the interoperability capabilities of UniCERT(tm), its flagship PKI product, within the EEMA (European Electronic Messaging Association) run PKI Challenge project. This successful outcome points to the open architecture of Baltimore UniCERT and the flexible, modular nature of its design which enables customers to easily integrate the product into even the most complex, high-end trust infrastructures.
In keeping with Baltimore's long-standing commitment to open standards, Baltimore welcomed the PKI Challenge as an opportunity to validate this strategy. The PKI Challenge has achieved its aim of identifying, addressing and overcoming PKI interoperability issues between the vendor community. UniCERT, Baltimore's award winning PKI Certificate Authority product, seamlessly interoperated with the PKI Challenge reference implementation which was hosted by Consignia in the UK.
"We are delighted that the PKI Challenge has demonstrated that PKI can and will work as a method of securing electronic transactions," commented Kate Hodgson, EEMA Board Member and Project Director of the PKI Challenge Management Consortium. "The project was a mammoth task - despite being conducted in an inclement business climate and changes due to company re-structuring, the project was an unmitigated success. The fact that ten of the top PKI vendor competitors took the time and considerable resource to test their PKI components speaks volumes about the industry's commitment to make this technology work" she continued.
From a commercial perspective, Baltimore has clients who have been driven by mergers and acquisitions to integrate UniCERT with other PKI systems, and it has been strategically important that such integration efforts have been achieved with minimal overhead. In keeping with this approach, Baltimore has successfully demonstrated technical compatibility with the requirements of the US government's Federal Bridge Certification Authority. As the first vendor to pass all interoperability tests on the basis of process and hosting, as well as pure product, Baltimore's strategy encompasses industry standards, including FIPS and IS7799.
"The ease and speed with which UniCERT interoperated with the PKI Challenge reference site was a vindication of Baltimore's commitment to meeting, as well as shaping, industry standards for this type of security offering," commented Jack Nagle, Director Public Sector Marketing, Baltimore Technologies. "Seamless interoperability between different domains is key to addressing issues of trust and confidence."
"The technical interoperability barrier to the adoption of PKI was an issue we were keen to address within the 5th Framework" commented Gérald Santucci, Head of Unit D4 "Trust and Security" within the European Commission Directorate General Information Society. "The PKI Challenge, through its involvement of key players within the industry, has made a major contribution to that," he continued. "The resulting wide-spread use of PKI technology should help to fuel new uses of digital certificates in important areas such as e-Government Web portals, healthcare, manufacturing and the financial industry, which can only be a good thing for the development of electronic communications" he concluded.
The PKI Challenge test plans looked at the interoperability of cross certification between peer Certification Authorities, subordinate CA certification from a superior CA to a subordinate CA, enrolment from a client to a CA and validation of the status of a certificate by a client.
The full PKI Challenge report, including the results of all of the testing participants is now available from www.eema.org/pki-challenge.asp. The Best Practice Documents will be launched at EEMA 2003 (EEMA's 16th Annual Conference in Prague - 16-18 June 2003 - www.eema.org/eema2003.asp).
About the PKI Challenge - www.eema.org/pki-challenge
The PKI Challenge (pkiC) was a two-year PKI interoperability project, which started in January 2001. The aim of pkiC was to overcome the current interoperability problems between PKI products, and thus develop specifications and best practice in the world standards arena.
Funded by the European Commission and the Swiss Government, and organised by EEMA (leading independent, European non-profit e-Business association), the project was run by a management consortium of 13 organisations :- Baltimore Technologies (Ireland), Belgacom (Belgium), Royal Mail (UK), EEMA (UK), GlobalSign (Belgium), KPMG (The Netherlands), Makra (UK), Security and Standards (UK), SmartTrust (Sweden), University of Leuven (Belgium), University of Salford (UK), Utimaco Safeware (Germany), WISeKey (Switzerland).
The reference implementation was developed and supplied for the pki Challenge by Utimaco, and the Directory used was produced and supplied by MaXware.
The 'testing participants' testing their products against the project's agreed interoperability specification criteria were: Baltimore Technologies, Cryptomathic, Guardeonic Solutions, Microsoft, RSA Security, Safelayer, SmartTrust, TC TrustCenter, UTI Systems and VeriSign
About EEMA - www.eema.org
EEMA was founded in 1987 and is the leading European non-for-profit e-Business association with the aim of pushing forward the boundaries of e-commerce, technology and legislation. Its numerous Interest Groups, workshops, conferences and seminars each specialise in areas of current concern, to educate and inform EEMA Members on latest developments and technologies, at the same time enabling members of the association to compare views and ideas. EEMA works closely with governmental bodies, standards organisations and e-Business initiatives throughout Europe and is an instrumental force in moving European business towards working electronically. Visit www.eema.org or contact info@eema.org.
About Baltimore Technologies
Baltimore Technologies' products, services and solutions address the fundamental security needs of e-business in distributed environments. Baltimore's e-security technology enables companies to verify the identity of electronic counterparties and securely manages which resources and information users can access through open networks. Many of the world's leading organisations in Finance and Government have deployed Baltimore's e-security technology to enable e-business over fixed and wireless networks. Baltimore also offers worldwide support for its authorization management and public key-based authentication products.
Baltimore's products, services and solutions are sold directly as well as through its worldwide partner network, Baltimore TrustedWorld(tm). Baltimore Technologies is a public company, listed on the London Stock Exchange (BLM). For more information on Baltimore Technologies, please visit http://www.baltimore.com
Media Contacts - Baltimore Technologies:
Irene Dehaene Dan Chappell
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Trademarks
UniCERT is a trademark of Baltimore Technologies plc. All other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Legal Disclaimer Certain statements that are not historical facts including certain statements made over the course of this document may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance and achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements implied by such forward-looking statements.