PKI Forum News

ICSA.net and PKI Forum Join Forces to Improve PKI Interoperability

Multi-Vendor collaboration yields significant progress

Reston, VA, May 30, 2000 -- ICSA.net (www.icsa.net ), the leading Internet security assurance company, and the PKI Forum (www.oasis-pki.org), a multi-vendor and end-user industry alliance, today announce an agreement to work together to promote and advance the large-scale deployment of PKI technology.

"The PKI Forum is delighted to be working with ICSA.net on PKI interoperability initiatives," said Lisa Pretty, executive director for the PKI Forum. "We make every attempt to leverage the efforts of other groups who are developing standards, certifying products and performing interoperability bake-offs - our fundamental approach is one of collaboration. By working with ICSA.net, the PKI Forum's first liaison member, we are able to take advantage of their expertise in security protocols and multi-vendor product testing."

The first initiative undertaken through this cooperative arrangement was a PKI interoperability workshop, which focused on the initial certificate registration transaction of the Certificate Management Protocol (RFC 2510). The protocol will be used in virtual private networks (VPNs) as a standard method for certificate enrollment and management.

A total of six PKI vendors -- Certicom, Cylink, Entegrity Solutions, Entrust Technologies, Trustcenter and Sun -- participated in the workshop, which was conducted over the Internet by organizations representing four different times zones.

"Significant progress in interoperability was achieved during the initial workshop. For example, the inclusion of testers for whom English is a second language revealed issues in the clarity of the specifications," said Robert Moskowitz, senior technical director for ICSA.net and project leader for the workshop series. "Such workshops play a very important role in working out problems associated with developing a viable solution to certificate management, and are necessary predecessors to future testing and certification projects."

This workshop was the first in a series of five being planned by PKI Forum and ICSA.net .The next interoperability workshop is planned for June 6-8 and will include additional vendors. The June workshop will focus on using CMP to request additional certificates, and future workshops will add certificate revocation, certificate rekeying and reissuing, cross-certificate requests and revocations. Each workshop will include earlier workshop tests to ensure that nothing is broken as progress is made on the specification and to include late-coming vendors into the workshops. The overall goal of the workshops is to achieve CMP interoperability by the end of 2000.

About the PKI Forum
The PKI Forum is an international, not-for-profit, multi-vendor and end-user alliance whose purpose is to accelerate the adoption of Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) products and services. Baltimore Technologies, Entrust Technologies, IBM, Microsoft and RSA Security Inc. founded the forum in December 1999 and since that time have welcomed PKI vendors, application developers, system integrators and end users to participate in Forum activities. Current interoperability initiatives underway at the forum include CMP interoperability, CA-CA interoperability with a focus on cross certification and application certificate interoperability. The PKI Forum advocates industry cooperation and market awareness to enable organizations to understand and exploit the value of PKI in their e-business applications. For more information about the PKI Forum visit http://www.oasis-pki.org.

About ICSA.net
ICSA.net is an industry leader in the growth and improvement of Internet security. ICSA.net offers TruSecure™ security services as well as multi-vendor, cross-industry product certification programs. ICSA.net helps businesses reduce their information security risks and enables the expansion of Internet technology implementation. ICSA.net has used its leadership and expertise to support the growth of Internet business and commerce worldwide. ICSA Labs, a division of ICSA.net, facilitate information interchange among industry experts, manufacturers and developers of information security products. ICSA Labs manage product consortia and provides testing to increase the quality of products and to enhance computer and network security. Information Security magazine, published monthly by ICSA.net, is the industry's leading source for news, analysis, insight and commentary on today's infosecurity marketplace. Visit http://www.icsa.net for additional information.

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