News in View: PKI and the birth of online commerce

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology is increasingly becoming the widely accepted way to secure online transactions and progress ecommerce. This is according to speakers and users at security vendor Baltimore Technologies' annual conference held this month in Dublin.

Peter Wilson, assistant commissioner in IT services at the Australian Tax Office doesn't believe there is a better technology on the market to support secure transactions over the Internet. He said: "PKI provides authentication, non-repudiation, ensures privacy and offers all the elements required for establishing that the parties involved, are who they say they are. These are all essential for ecommerce."

PKI includes the technology and procedures that establish a secure method for exchanging information across the Net. It also involves the use of certification authorities (CAs) and digital signatures and hardware and software used to manage the process.

Fran Rooney, CEO of Baltimore Technologies, said the number of clients taking PKI seriously is growing. "A number of our customers have spent well over a million dollars on the infrastructure and technology in PKI and they don't spend that sort of money unwisely - they've obviously decided it's worth doing," he said.

Rooney added that the main driver behind the decision to invest heavily in PKI - despite the risk that it's still an immature technology - is the perceived high returns on investment. "They see that the potential savings down to the low cost per transaction on the Internet are worth the investment," he said.

You can watch the full News in View programme on our Ebusiness Security Channel: see http://www.silicon.com/a33876