The Challenge calls for the submission of new deployment methodologies for the next generation of enterprise security architectures that break down traditional perimeter walls.

"The Jericho Forum has issued a worldwide challenge to any team of technology experts to design a secure architectural solution that is open, interoperable, viable, and operates in a de-perimeterised environment," says David McCaskill, Section Manager Information Security and Solutions at Procter & Gamble and Member of The Jericho Forum's Board of Management. "The Jericho Forum Challenge was issued in an effort to kick-start the debate around secure system design and to get industry discussion started around aspects of the de-perimeterisation problem-space as detailed in the Jericho Forum Visioning Whitepaper."

"We are of the same mind as The Jericho Forum - that security is moving away from the current perimeter protection model towards a de-perimeterised model," says Dr Nicko van Someren, Chief Technology Officer at nCipher. "Our response to the challenge will be to illustrate how the next-generation of enterprise security will rely on strong authentication of devices and users and content protection at the data level. We will demonstrate how cryptography will become established as a core technology underpinning this new trust infrastructure. We enthusiastically accept the Jericho challenge."

The Forum's charter is to influence the development of common security standards to support the growing need for a new approach to interoperability and security within IT systems that support collaboration and commerce over open networks, an architecture and design approach known as de-perimeterisation. Its members include Barclays, Boeing, BP, HSBC, ICI, Procter & Gamble, Rolls Royce and Royal Mail. nCipher recently announced that it has become one of the first vendors to join the Jericho Forum.