Having consummated its merger with CyberTrust last month, Baltimore Technologies, last week launched UniCert Options, a combination of PKI (public-key infrastructure) software and services.
It headlined a busy week of activity in the security world, which also saw RSA Data Security round out its B-Safe security software product line with new Java tools and Securant Technologies' launch of ClearTrust access control software.
Baltimore is edging toward an application service provider model with UniCert Options by combining its own PKI software with a variety of hosting and integration services. Baltimore is promising faster deployments and more PKI configurations as it connects its certificate management software with the company's seven-step PKI methodology and the hosting and integration services acquired from CyberTrust.
The appeal is flexibility, as Baltimore wants customers to feel they have a wide range of options with the software instead of having to fit their infrastructure into one of a few PKI systems.
"My sense is the product mix now is much stronger and more flexible," said Ron Szoc, senior vice president at Ruesch International, which provides international business-to-business payment services. In the year since Ruesch went online with a PKI payment site for its customers, 7 percent of all transactionsÃÆ'Ã,¢Ã¢,Ã,¬"about US$1 million per dayÃÆ'Ã,¢Ã¢,Ã,¬"have moved online. And the number is growing, Szoc said.
"The merger means it's now not an all-or-none proposition," Szoc said. "We use some of Baltimore's services, and we can add others as we grow. ... We may want to host the certificate authority ourselves once we hit 20,000 customers, and now we could do that."
Separately, RSA rounded out its PKI services by adding Java-based Cert-J to its PKI tool kit, which is part of the B-Safe line of security development software.
The addition of Cert-J means RSA now supports both C and Java development on its three B-Safe platforms: cryptography services, Secure Sockets Layer protocol services and PKI services.
Securant this week plans to ship ClearTrust 4.0ÃÆ'Ã,¢Ã¢,Ã,¬"access control software that defines what information users can have once they authenticate.
Version 4.0 includes a proxy server that provides one access control server to many platforms, delegated administration and policy-based threat detection. Pricing for the suite starts at US$20 per user, officials said.
