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Security Dynamics' Encryption gets Approval
by Matthew Nelson
InfoWorld
Security Dynamics has announced that its RSA SecurPC 2.0 encryption
product has received U.S. Government approval for international export.
RSA SecurPC 2.0 is the first general-purpose, 128-bit, level-encryption
system approved for export that doesn't use a third-party encryption
provider.
The government has fought 128-bit export because it would be
in-accessible by law-enforcement agencies if necessary, while encryption
users are unwilling to give the government easy access to secure
transmissions. Security Dynamics has met the government half way through a
"self escrow" system within RSA SecurPC 2.0, according to Walt Sizer,
senior product manager for enterprise Internet applications at Security
Dynamics.
"We received the authority to basically be able to ship to all
financial institutions, including banks, and all U.S. and Canadian
companies with foreign subsidiaries, full-strength 128-bit encryption
based on the government's acceptance of the key-recovery mechanism in
SecurPC," Sizer said.
RSA SecurPC 2.0 includes a key-recovery system that holds a copy of all
private keys in use with SecurPC within a company. As necessary, for
internal use or through a government-agency request, the private keys used
to encrypt a message can be found and used to decrypt a message using the
key-recovery system.
To avoid misuse of the key recovery, SecurPC can be configured to
require a quorum of officials to agree to gain access to the keys.
"We can establish a set of trustees for the recovery of the private key
at the recovery station," Sizer said.
"The likelihood that you're going to have an abuse among four
individuals is fairly low."
Some analysts believe the self-escrow system may answer government
encryption export problems.
"In the industry there is no efficient system for key recovery or key
escrow," said David Herman, director of global electronic commerce at Dun
& Bradstreet, an industry information provider in Murray Hill, N.J. "This
may be a solution."
RSA SecurPC 2.0 is available for Windows95 at a cost of $59 per seat.
www.securitydynamics.com
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Received on Sat Mar 14 03:20:16 1998