Set to be operational in the second quarter of 2006, Entrust Managed PKI Service has been designed to meet US Federal Common policy and standards requirements while providing the same high level of technology and services that have positioned Entrust as a leader in PKI.

"Entrust's knowledge and experience on the front lines of PKI technology is unsurpassed," said Entrust Senior Vice President Peter Bello. "We believe the service offering will help allow enterprises and government agencies to take advantage of the flexibility and enabling values of Entrust's PKI technology in a quick, efficient and cost effective way."

Entrust Managed PKI Service also will be able to help federal agencies meet HSPD-12 requirements, a directive issued by President Bush on August 27, 2004 intended to strengthen executive branch security by standardizing employee and contractor access to federal facilities and information systems. In addition to utilizing the Entrust Managed PKI Service, government agencies also can leverage their existing Entrust PKI implementation to address HSPD-12 requirements.

"With renewed interest in PKI, driven primarily by enterprise and government initiatives such as HSPD-12, having a choice of best-of-breed vendors is critical," said Allan Carey, program manager for security services research at IDC. "Entrust's long history in the PKI market positions them well to provide that choice for government and enterprise customers."

Entrust Managed PKI Service will include the management functions that have set Entrust apart from other vendors in the market including high availability, disaster recovery, automated failover and network protection. Additional benefits of Entrust's PKI service include intrusion protection, anti-virus for the Certification Authority (CA) services, denial of service protections and archival of CA data. These strong management services are provided transparently to end-users of the Entrust Managed PKI Service. Cygnacom Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Entrust, Inc., will operate the CA.

"In addition to the federal marketplace, we believe Entrust Managed PKI Service will be of particular interest to commercial companies and state agencies that need stronger security with the enabling characteristics of PKI, but don't want to incur the costs of building and maintaining an infrastructure to support it," Bello said. "Once operational, we intend to move quickly to achieve Shared Service Provider (SSP) and Federal Bridge Certificate Authority (FBCA) cross-certification status, helping provide seamless secure data exchange and authentication across multiple federal and state agencies."