VALICERT AND CERTICOM ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC ALLIANCE FOR WIRELESS SECURITY

Partnership Enables Powerful Combination of MobileTrust Certificates and ValiCert m-Commerce Express For the Wireless Market

GSM WORLD CONGRESS CANNES, FRANCE, February 21, 2001 -ValiCert, Inc. (NASDAQ: VLCT), a premier provider of trust solutions for business transactions, and Certicom (Nasdaq: CERT; TSE: CIC), a leading provider of mobile e-Business security, today announced a strategic alliance to provide certificate authority (CA) and validation authority (VA) services for the wireless market. As a premier wireless CA partner, Certicom's MobileTrust(tm) offering will be enhanced with the ValiCert Global VA Servicesm enabling Certicom customers, including users of Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) certificates, to benefit from premier wireless validation capabilities. ValiCert's customers will benefit from access to Certicom's MobileTrust, a comprehensive wireless certificate service. 

As part of today's announced agreement, ValiCert is adding support for Certicom's Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to the ValiCert Validation Authority solution. ECC, the industry's smallest, fastest, and most efficient cryptographic algorithms available today, is used by leading OEMs such as Motorola, Sony, Palm and RIM to secure WAP phones, pagers and PDA platforms. 

(Note to editors: Please see release titled "ValiCert Launches m-Commerce Express, designed to enable legal-grade security for wireless transactions," dated 2/20/01.)

The Certicom partnership is part of ValiCert's strategy to expand its presence in the wireless arena, and marks the company's ongoing commitment to enabling global trust as enterprises increasingly continue to streamline processes and leverage new opportunities through wireless communications. As a result, enterprise wireless users will have access to certificate validation capabilities for all wireless transactions, thereby establishing trust and authenticity in the transactions and the parties with which they are conducted.

"Certicom is a premier provider of wireless credentials and their customers can now benefit from a higher level of security with our enhanced VA offering, which will now include support for WTLS certificates from the Certicom MobileTrust CA.," said Sathvik Krishnamurthy, vice president of marketing and business development for ValiCert. "Because of our close alliance with Certicom, ValiCert is now ideally positioned to offer companies the end-to-end e-Transaction trust that they require - from the desktop to a variety of handheld devices."

"ValiCert is a global leader in validation authority solutions and our relationship with them will go a long way in providing the wireless industry with the most advanced levels of security for wireless transactions," said Prakash Panjwani, vice president of business development for Certicom. "As the leading provider of wireless security, Certicom continues to expand the global presence of the MobileTrust CA service. Our partnership with ValiCert is an important part of our strategy to deliver a secure trusted infrastructure for the wireless Internet." 

About ValiCert m-Commerce Express

ValiCert m-Commerce Express( is targeted to meet the specific requirements of enterprises, banks, financial services companies, carriers, mobile application providers, and wireless gateway/wireless ASPs. End users of this infrastructure will ultimately include enterprises, financial services and banks as well as consumers accessing accounts through a bank or enterprise. Applications that utilize ValiCert m-Commerce Express will consist of financial processes, such as treasury/cash management, trade confirmations for commodity transactions (stock, futures, options, etc.) and other information-driven applications that require legal-grade security. 

The ValiCert m-Commerce Express initiative relies on ValiCert products and services that offer a flexible secure e-Transaction solution, which financial organizations and enterprises can tailor to meet their specific requirements. The components of the ValiCert m-Commerce Express initiative include:

* ValiCert Validation Authority -- offers a high-performance, reliable and scalable 3rd generation transaction validation solution that provides the tools necessary to validate certificates from any CA and authority of parties involved in virtually any transaction in any application.
* ValiCert Digital Receipt Solutions -- enables organizations and individuals to securely timestamp, notarize, archive, audit and reconstruct e-Transactions.
* ValiCert Professional Services -- spans the entire range from help-desk support services to on-site consulting and integration services, all delivered by trained domain experts and practicing consultants.

About Certicom's MobileTrust CA Service
The Certicom MobileTrust Certificate Authority issues digital certificates for the wired and wireless Internet. Leading healthcare, enterprise, and e-commerce application developers use MobileTrust certificates to enable trusted, secure connections between wired and wireless users and to generate digitally signed transactions.

MobileTrust is the first CA in the industry to provide both RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) digital certificates. ECC is the preferred security for wireless transactions because it is the only security algorithm that can deliver commercially viable security and performance in mobile and wireless environments.

* MobileTrust Server Certificates
MobileTrust Server Certificates are used by customers needing to secure application servers, WAP gateways, and other wireless servers. MobileTrust operates a retail service center for server certificate sales at http://mobiletrust.certicom.com.com. MobileTrust certificates work in industry-standard SSL and WTLS security protocols to secure servers that communicate with a wide variety of mobile devices and mobile applications.

* MobileTrust Managed CA Service
The MobileTrust Managed CA Service is used by customers needing to issue and manage client and server certificates. Certicom provides the industry's only solution that enables customers to bridge the gap between the wired and wireless worlds by enabling an administrator to manage both RSA certificates for wired applications and ECC certificates for the wireless world from a single console. The Managed CA service lets enterprises, gateway operators and ASPs outsource the most difficult and costly functions of a Public Key Infrastructure, while retaining full control of security decisions. 

About Certicom
Certicom is a leading provider of information security software and services, specializing in solutions for mobile e-business. The company's products and services are specifically designed to address the challenges imposed by a wireless data environment. Certicom's solutions incorporate its proprietary encryption technology and are based on industry standards for information security that utilize public key cryptography. Certicom's products are currently licensed to more than 150 customers including ePocrates, Inc., Motorola, Inc., NeoPoint, Inc., Nortel Networks, Openwave Systems, Inc., Palm, Inc., Pixo, Inc., QUALCOMM, Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. and Sony International (Europe) GmbH. Certicom's headquarters and worldwide sales and marketing operations are based in the Silicon Valley in Hayward. For more information, visit Certicom's Web site at http://www.certicom.com

About ValiCert
ValiCert is a leading provider of trusted transaction infrastructure products and managed services for conducting business safely over the Internet. The company's open and neutral security solutions are designed to enable enterprises and service providers to protect all phases of the transaction lifecycle, regardless of which certificate authorities, payment vendors or applications are used. ValiCert's products and services are available through its direct sales force, resellers and global affiliate network.

ValiCert has technology and marketing alliances with a range of security, e-Commerce and wireless companies, as well as systems integrators. The company's customers include Global 2000 organizations in financial services, telecom, healthcare and government sectors. ValiCert is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices through out the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. ValiCert is available on the World Wide Web athttp://www.valicert.com.

ValiCert and ValiCert m-Commerce Express are trademarks of ValiCert, Inc. ValiCert Global VA Service is a service mark of ValiCert, Inc. 

Certicom, MobileTrust and WTLS Plus are trademarks or registered trademarks of Certicom Corp. All other product and brand names are 
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Except for historical information, this press release includes forward-looking statements regarding the company's relationship with Certicom, and the introduction of ValiCert m-Commerce Express. These statements are denoted by words such as "anticipated," "expected" and other similar words. These forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties including the company's relationship with Certicom and the integration of their respective products. These risks and uncertainties, as well as those reflected in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the company's final prospectus dated July 27, 2000 may cause actual results to differ from those stated in this release. 

Except for historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to the acceptance of mobile and wireless devices and the continued growth of e-commerce and m-commerce (mobile e-commerce), the increase of the demand for mutual authentication in m-commerce transactions, the acceptance of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology as an industry standard, the market acceptance of our principle products and sales of our customer's products, the impact of competitive products and technologies, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of third parties, and costs of product development. Certicom will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect Certicom's financial results is included in the documents Certicom files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulatory authorities including Certicom's current Annual Report on Form 10-K.

For additional information contact:

Patrick Corman Rich Black
Corman Communications ValiCert, Inc.
(650) 326-9648 (650) 567-6596
patrick@cormancom.com richb@valicert.com

 

Nancy MacGregor Lorraine Kauffman
Corman Communications Certicom
(415) 643-0766 (510) 780-5417
nancy@cormancom.com lkauffman@certicom.com