Entrust Public-key Infrastructure Software is the First Commercial Product to Support Biometric Devices

21 October 1997
Source: Business Wire

Entrust Public-key Infrastructure Software is the First Commercial Product to Support Biometric Devices

October 21, 1997

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE) Entrust Software Now Supports the Broadest Range of Hardware Add-ons in Industry

Entrust Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of Certification Authority (CA) and public-key management products, today announced that Entrust(R) software is the first commercially available product that supports biometric devices. The addition of biometric devices to the broad range of hardware add-ons that already work with Entrust software, including smart cards and tokens, gives users access to the most flexible security architecture available today.

Biometric devices, such as thumbprint readers, provide users with a higher level of authentication than can be provided with software alone. For example, by making use of the unique, unchanging nature of fingerprints, biometric devices can replace passwords and bring advanced user identification to computer systems. Unlike passwords and PINs, fingerprints can't be lost, borrowed or forgotten.

The advantage of using smart cards or tokens with Entrust software is that users have the option of carrying their electronic identities in hardware, which provides enhanced security when they access protected data or send and receive encrypted data. Entrust software works with smart cards and tokens that support the RSA Labs Public-Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS #11.) Support for CA hardware devices - which provide a higher level of security for critical functions such as certificate signing operations and CA signing key pair generation and storage - will be available in Entrust software products early in 1998.

"Entrust Technologies has always taken a leadership position by providing support for a broad range of complementary security technologies through industry standard open interfaces. We are now making it even easier for users to protect critical data by being the first to support biometric devices," said John Ryan, president and chief executive officer, Entrust Technologies. "Combined with our support for smart cards and tokens, the addition of biometric devices makes Entrust software the most comprehensive data security solution available today. And all Entrust-Ready(TM) products automatically support these devices without any additional development work."

Security vendors who provide hardware add-ons that work with Entrust include ActivCard, American Biometric, Atalla, Chrysalis, Datakey, Keyware, Lintronic, nCipher and Rainbow.

"Network users and administrators are requiring higher levels of security for today's network applications. This goal is often viewed as counter to the flexibility inherent in Intranets and the Internet," said Jean-Gerard Galvez, chief executive officer of ActivCard. "Together with industry leaders like Entrust, ActivCard delivers the strength of public-key, secret-key and digital signature solutions for multiple application environments, utilizing smart cards and tokens to protect sensitive information for additional assurance."

"Our BioMouse live fingerprint scanner provides the high performance, low cost plug-and-play computer peripheral that gives Entrust users advanced user identification and safer access to critical data," said Kent R. Foster, vice president, American Biometric Company. "Coupling Entrust's software with the BioMouse scanner provides state-of-the-art security architecture. "

"Entrust is the premier public-key infrastructure platform for building secure Internet applications," said Bob Gargus, president of Atalla. "We believe strong electronic commerce security can only be achieved if the crypto protocols and secret keys are protected in hardware and the participants know for certain who they are dealing with. Biometric identification is the ultimate way to verify the identity of the participants and, when used with server-based crypto coprocessors and client-based smartcards or other tokens, an Entrust application can be as secure as technology can make it today."

"Our entire line of encryption tokens and server-based encryption systems is designed Entrust-Ready and fits nicely into all levels of the Entrust architecture," said Steven Baker, president and chief executive officer of Chrysalis-ITS. "Our newest product, LunaCA, brings a new level of performance and trust to Entrust/Manager users who generate their own private key pairs and digital certificates. Our high-performance Luna2 is tailored for users who must encrypt large documents or who have complex operations, " he said.

Baker noted the original Luna token provides economical high security to client systems in an Entrust environment. "Entrust users such as the Canadian Payments Association and Document Authentication Systems have integrated Luna tokens into their operations," he said.

Carl P. Boecher, president and chief executive officer of Datakey stated: "Joining the Entrust Partner Program is an exciting step for Datakey. Entrust is a leader in the information security market. Their existing customer base can now take advantage of Datakey's smart card based SignaSURE CIP which provides a simple `load-plug-play' add on to the Entrust systems. This Entrust-Ready cryptographic smart card solution provides an additional level of security for those organizations that require two factor authentication and portability of credentials."

Francis Declercq, president and chief executive officer of Keyware states: "The proliferation of companies conducting mission critical business activities over both private and public networks greatly increases the need for infallible security across the enterprise and beyond. An essential element of security is absolutely accurate personal identification, which Keyware provides through its Layered Biometric Verification(TM) solutions. We're pleased to see industry leaders like Entrust recognize the importance of biometrics by supporting the technology in its products."

"nCipher's nFast range of cryptographic accelerators provides the cryptographic processing speed needed for intensive use of certification authority servers. By working in partnership with Entrust, nCipher is able to meet the needs of the most demanding CA applications," said Alex van Someren, chief executive officer of nCipher.

"We're pleased to add Entrust to CryptoSwift's long list of supported servers, alongside Microsoft, Netscape, Stronghold and others," said Shawn Abbott, chief scientist for Rainbow's Internet Security Group. " CryptoSwift is the proven way to slash response time, increase capacity and add hardware level security on a secure server."

Entrust Technologies is dedicated to ensuring the privacy and authenticity of data communications enterprise-wide. Its award-winning public-key infrastructure technology combines encryption and digital signature capabilities with fully automated key management. Widely used by financial institutions, government agencies and high-tech corporations, the Entrust software family provides a complete security solution across multiple platforms for desktops, corporate networks, intranets and the Internet. Entrust Technologies is headquartered in Richardson, TX with offices in New York, California, North Carolina, Virginia, Ottawa, Ontario and London, U.K. and is a majority-owned subsidiary of Nortel (Northern Telecom). Visit Entrust Technologies' Web site at http://www.entrust.com Entrust is a registered trademark of Entrust Technologies Limited. All Entrust product names are trademarks of Entrust Technologies Limited. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.