Tech Bytes: Irish Firm Upgrades Certification Software

Baltimore Technologies Inc. said it has released a certification authority system that bolsters security for electronic commerce.

The company, which delivered its first certificate authority software in 1992, said the new version, Unicert 2.0, is completely redesigned to accommodate Internet shopping, banking, and securities trading on any scale.

"Its unique design ensures that it can be deployed on any system from a single personal computer to large-scale systems that manage millions of certificates," said chief executive officer Fran Rooney. For electronic commerce to become as commonplace as credit cards and automated tellers, "large-scale security systems must be possible."

Unicert can be used by banks or corporations that issue certificates to their own employees, or by trusted third parties that authenticate digital identities.

Baltimore Technologies, which is leading the Eurotrust project to develop a multinational trusted-third-party infrastructure, said Unicert is not subject to legal or export restrictions on data encryption keys. It therefore can support RSA Data Security key lengths of 512, 1,024, and 2,048 bits.

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