Irish e-security specialist Baltimore Technologies has signed a deal with Ceska Posta, the Czech postal service, to secure the new trust services that will be deployed throughout the central European country.
PostSignum, Ceska Posta’s newly established Commercial Certificate Authority, will use Baltimore’s UniCert digital certificate technology to authenticate the online identity of users, ensure the integrity of data transmitted over the internet and ensure the non-repudiation of electronic messages and transactions by businesses and citizens.
The first service to be launched by PostSignum, entitled Registered Electronic Post, will operate as a new secure and traceable message delivery services that will enable registered senders and recipients to digitally sign and encrypt messages exchanged.
According to the director of strategy planning at Ceska Posta, the trusted service will be one of a raft of such services that will be created.
The service will be implemented using Baltimore’s technology by its Czech partner ICZ. EMEA vice president of Baltimore Patrick Jourdas explained: “Czech Post has demonstrated its clear vision of the future of both electronic postal services and electronic transactions and also has the expertise to successfully deploy Baltimore’s public key infrastructure (PKI) technology.”
Last week, Baltimore signalled it was no longer up for sale, after receiving a disappointing number of offers for the company. The company had earlier divested itself of its single sign-on technology unit SelectAccess, by selling it to Hewlett-Packard for £8.3m sterling. However, the deal has been harshly criticised by industry analyst Gartner, which claimed the deal “lacked strategic vision” on the part of Hewlett-Packard, which it claimed was trying to enter a specific security market several years too late.
By John Kennedy
