The office of the e-Envoy has awarded netproject a contract to examine how to achieve an Open Source PKI that could be used in the second round of PKI interoperability trials to be conducted by the UK Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) . . .
The office of the e-Envoy has awarded netproject a contract to examine how to achieve an Open Source PKI that could be used in the second round of PKI interoperability trials to be conducted by the UK Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) later this year.

'The importance of this contract is that the UK Government has recognised the need for a vendor neutral entrant to the PKI Interoperability Trials and because Open Source is free the initial survey and study is being funded by the office of the e-Envoy.' said Eddie Bleasdale, director of netproject.

Project director Dr Andrew Findlay said 'It is desirable that an open-source PKI be entered in the interoperability testing and demonstration. Among the benefits to flow will be the provision of a non-proprietary 'neutral ground' where vendors can work directly with the code at both ends of a communication.'

The background is that netproject, which is a consultancy club of user organisations including Royal Sun Alliance, Nationwide, National Grid, Racal Defence Systems, Government Departments, etc, has been working on the issues of achieving secure single sign on for the past 18 months.

'Public-key cryptography is not used to encrypt data directly' said Andrew Findlay, 'It is used for key exchange, key distribution, and digital signatures. Its primary benefit is allowing people who have no pre-existing security arrangement to exchange messages securely, or for a sender to authenticate a message to a random receiver.'

For those who want to know more netproject will be running a workshop 'Secure Authentication and Authorisation of Remote Users' on Friday 15th June. This will detail the approach that is being proposed and to solicit input from interested parties. Full details are at www.netproject.com

 -- Eddie Bleasdale netproject, 124 Middleton Road, Morden, Surrey, SM4 6RW Tel: +44 (0)20 8715 0072  Mobile: +44 (0)7989 012 847