Entrust Technologies Inc., an information security company with strong positions in the financial and telecommunications industries, said it is making a major commitment to extend its technology into the wireless market.
Working with several of its customers and licensees, including Bank of Nova Scotia and 724 Solutions Inc., a developer of banking software for wireless communications devices, Entrust said it wants to bring mobile phones, pagers, personal digital assistants, and other small appliances into a "trusted e-business environment" with public key infrastructure, or PKI, data encryption techniques.
"Entrust is validating its market leadership by being first to provide customers with products and services to secure their wireless e-business transactions," said John Ryan, president and chief executive officer of Plano, Tex.-based Entrust. "Our customers will be able to securely expand their distribution channels, offer new services, and enhance their brands."
Entrust said it will extend its PKI offerings to work with technical standards such as GSM, Global System for Mobile communications, which governs at least a third of the 380 million wireless phones worldwide, and WAP, the wireless application protocol, which much of the telephone industry and others interested in new ways of using the mobile networks has embraced.
For example, Entrust digital certificates will work with an emerging standard associated with WAP called WTLS, or Wireless Transaction Layer Security, which is similar to the Secure Sockets Layer form of encryption that is widely utilized on the Internet.
"The availability of PKI technology and services supporting the Nokia WAP Server allows our customers to develop, deploy, and use demanding mobile e-business services," said Heikki Heinaro, general manager of business development at Nokia Wireless Software Solutions.
Greg Wolfond, chairman and CEO of 724 Solutions in Toronto, said Entrust's announcement "is another step toward standards-based security that will help enable the delivery of sophisticated mobile e-commerce services."
"As wireless technology evolves and grows in popularity, security concerns remain paramount," said Albert Wahbe, president of e-Scotia.com, Bank of Nova Scotia's virtual service subsidiary. Scotiabank was an early PKI customer of Entrust, which began as a unit of the Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks. Mr. Wahbe said that e-Scotia wants to extend security assurances to remote hand-held devices.
Also joining in Entrust's wireless announcement were Nortel Networks; The Finnish telecommunications company Sonera, which is a wireless pioneer and investor in 724 Solutions; and Secom, a Japanese security company and Entrust distributor.
Separately, Entrust has added a division of Vasco Data Security International Inc. to its Alliance Developer Program, which certifies related security products as being "Entrust Ready."
Vasco is best known as a provider of security tokens for authenticating users in a computer or communications network. Intellisoft, the division in the Entrust program, offers an enterprise security framework called SnareWorks that includes PKI, single-sign-on security, and secure Web applications.
SnareWorks Client/VPN, for virtual private networks, was declared Entrust Ready.
"SnareWorks can deliver Entrust/PKI software's capabilities to a large population of applications with no programming or intervention of any kind," said Jonathan Chinitz, vice president and general manager of Intellisoft, which came to Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.-based Vasco in an acquisition. "This is another milestone in our promise to deliver the 'speed to security' that customers expect from us."
