Through a partnership with Patrick Townsend & Associates, a leading software development and consulting firm, nCipher can deliver the most comprehensive general purpose key management solution on the market.

Encrypting sensitive data has become a priority for many large organizations, especially since the Payment Card Industry (PCI) released its requirements for protecting credit card numbers. PCI requires not only that companies store credit card data in an unreadable form, but also that they fully document and implement key management processes and procedures for the secure generation, distribution, storage, archiving, replacement and retirement of all keys used to encrypt credit card numbers. Taking advantage of encryption has always been a particular challenge on platforms such as System i where there has been a reliance on manual techniques for the management of cryptographic keys. nCipher's centralized key management system solves this problem and removes the barrier to the deployment of encryption on these types of transactional systems and distributed networks.

This partnership brings together nCipher's cryptographic key management expertise with Patrick Townsend & Associates' extensive capabilities developing solutions for System i environments. Patrick Townsend and Associates has licensed nCipher's key management protocol to enable its suite of encryption and data protection solutions to communicate with nCipher's keyAuthority enterprise key management product line. Together, nCipher and Patrick Townsend & Associates will enable organizations to encrypt data on the System i and to securely manage the usage and distribution of cryptographic keys from a central location.

"As the world's foremost experts in creating security systems for System i platforms we see growing demand from our customers to secure their data through the use of encryption," says Patrick Townsend, President at Patrick Townsend & Associates. "One of the primary benefits of System i is that large enterprises are able to deploy a centrally managed IT infrastructure at remote locations, being able to centrally manage the encryption and cryptographic keys is therefore a must-have feature. nCipher's keyAuthority solution gives our customers the centralized key management capabilities they need to underpin our data security solutions."

"Encryption is the last line of defense for data protection and this partnership with Patrick Townsend & Associates allows us to expand the reach of our keyAuthority solution into the System i environment and offer the most comprehensive general purpose enterprise key management system on the market," says Richard Moulds, vice president marketing at nCipher. "Through the combination of our open approach to key management we have been able to bring together two best-in-class technologies and enable our joint customers to address the growing need for data level security without needing to establish new security procedures and skills at remote locations, branch offices and other System i based facilities."