If the governments of the world are to be believed, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is playing straight into the hands of the criminal underworld. According to some, it is just too strong, which means that Big Brother finds it very difficult to keep his beady eyes locked onto our every movement.. . .
If the governments of the world are to be believed, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is playing straight into the hands of the criminal underworld. According to some, it is just too strong, which means that Big Brother finds it very difficult to keep his beady eyes locked onto our every movement.

This may well be true, but whether that is a valid enough reason for certain government departments to want access to private keys - as was once mooted - is debatable. The fact is that PKI does a job and does it very well.

Some of the issues those looking to implement the technology may come across include sheer complexity and cost. True, it is very hard to put a price on your company's security and wellbeing, but trying to look after a complex system can sometimes open up more holes than looking after a simple technology well.

Virtual private network (VPN) technology has been around for years (as has PKI, which was initially disregarded due to US Government fears). It is sufficiently mature for relatively unskilled staff to implement and upkeep well enough to create extremely strong tunnels over insecure mediums. Evanna Kearins, spokeswoman at Baltimore Technologies, says: "A VPN is one of the easiest applications to show a return on investment."

The link for this article located at vnunet is no longer available.