Certicom Corp. has broadened the horizons of its elliptic curve security technology through a partnership agreement with Motorola Inc.
Motorola is investing $13.5 million in 500,000 Certicom common shares. It also obtained warrants that could double its holdings in the Canadian data encryption company to as much as 10% over the next two years.
Perhaps most important to Certicom's cause, Motorola gained extensive rights to use its cryptography approach-an alternative to that usually associated with industry standard-bearer RSA Data Security Inc.-and will help Certicom develop it further.
A major producer of semiconductors and wireless communications technology and a growing force in the smart card market, Motorola gives Certicom the latest and perhaps biggest in a series of credibility boosts.
Certicom has spent more than 10 years preparing elliptic curve cryptography for commercial use. It seems well-suited to smart cards, cellular phones, and other applications where computing power is at a premium to calculate extremely complex encryption algorithms. These formulas are used to scramble digital messages and prevent interception and tampering. Certicom says its system can secure with a 160-bit encryption key what RSA does with 1,024, speeding calculations and freeing computing capacity for other purposes.
Certicom officials have said elliptic curve makes encryption and digital signatures economically and technically feasible even with low-capacity smart card chips. The Mississauga, Ontario, technology supplier has been working closely with the French smart card manufacturer Schlumberger to prove that point.
RSA has not fully embraced elliptic curve. Though it is experimenting with it, RSA says it has not been subjected to full laboratory and real- world rigors-as have conventional algorithms.
The Motorola alliance "is an important endorsement of Certicom's elliptic curve encryption technology and will drive it into our target markets-wireless, smart cards, and integrated circuits," said Certicom president and chief executive officer Philip Deck.
He pointed out that Certicom is building on a relationship that included an August 1996 agreement to use elliptic curve in the $28 billion electronic giant's wireless products.
Robert Bigony, senior vice president in Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola's space and systems technology group, is joining Certicom's board. He said Motorola views elliptic curve "as an essential technology to secure wireless transmissions and customer-driven demand for this level of security."
