Following selection through competitive tender, keyAuthority has been chosen to provide a common key management infrastructure serving the needs of multiple business areas and IT systems, as the use of encryption and other forms of cryptographic security expands across the company. This follows the announcement at the AGM on 25 May 2007 of the agreement of commercial terms.

Commenting on the contract, Alex van Someren, Chief Executive Officer, nCipher plc said: "Following demanding proof-of-concept trials, keyAuthority has been selected ahead of competing products for this prestigious contract win. Many organizations around the world are actively taking steps to protect critical and sensitive data, with encryption becoming the preferred method to enforce privacy policies.

"With more than ten years' specialist experience in the field of key management, the choice of keyAuthority by this important customer demonstrates the value of our innovative research and development process in creating preferred solutions for the most security-conscious companies in the world."

Enterprise key management is increasingly seen as an important way to address IT and compliance concerns in relation to data security. A recent survey of more than 100 large companies by the market research firm Taneja Group* reported that 54% of respondents plan to deploy key management systems within the next 12 months. To address this growing market keyAuthority centralizes the storage and administration of sensitive cryptographic key material which can then be automatically distributed on-demand to servers and applications anywhere across the extended global enterprise. keyAuthority replaces costly and error prone manual key management processes and avoids the complexity and inconsistency of using the native key management features of individual applications or devices. keyAuthority also provides capabilities to manage key archiving and can form the cornerstone of a broader, data centric security strategy to manage sensitive information within and beyond the enterprise.

* The Growing Importance of Storage Security & Key Management in Large
Enterprises - The Taneja Group April 2007