World's #1 telecommunications firm collaborates with Certicom to leverage elliptic curve cryptography

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario – (February 6, 2007) –Certicom Corp. (TSX: CIC) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation have signed an agreement to conduct joint research on various aspects of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). 

The world class cryptographic research teams at NTT and Certicom will combine their efforts on elliptic curve based digital signatures and their applications.  In particular the researchers will focus on extremely small digital signatures that can hide messages in the signature itself, unlike today’s signatures where the message is sent separately. These signatures will be at least ten times smaller than RSA-based digital signatures, yet provides the same level of security, thereby making them ideal for the limited space and power found on small devices.

“We are bringing together two of the best cryptographic research teams in the world to create new security technologies for the mobile platform,” said Dr. Scott Vanstone, founder and executive vice-president, strategic technology at Certicom, “We at Certicom are very excited to work with the NTT team on aspects of security that are relevant and necessary for the telecommunications applications that service providers want to offer.”

NTT is the global leader in telecommunications and a leading innovator of telecommunication technologies. NTT has several laboratories, one of which, the Information Sharing Platform Laboratories,  has performed R&D on information security, especially cryptography, for the past 25 years. Symmetric key encryption, Camellia, public key encryption, PSEC-KEM, digital signatures, ESIGN and ECAO are all developed in the laboratories and are adopted as International Standards ISO/IEC, IEEE, IETF.

Backed by more than 20 years of experience, Certicom is considered a pioneer in ECC research and implementations. The company continues to invest heavily in its research and development team to further explore and develop this technology, which is used in a growing number of sectors ranging from wireless devices and consumer electronics and semiconductors to government and financial services. The small size of ECC is a main driver behind its popularity.

About NTT
NTT Corporation is the holding company of NTT group corporations that are the largest carrier in Japan, and has several laboratories of telecommunication technologies. The NTT Group has led the development of telecommunications in Japan for more than a century. The major companies that comprise the NTT Group continue to accommodate the emerging needs of the ubiquitous broadband society in the 21st century, while fulfilling their social mission in each business field in an increasingly competitive global market environment. Visit www.ntt.co.jp/index_e.html

About Certicom
Certicom protects the value of your content, applications and devices with government-approved security. Adopted by the National Security Agency (NSA) for classified and unclassified government communications, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provides the most security per bit of any known public-key scheme. As the undisputed leader in ECC, Certicom security offerings are currently licensed to more than 300 customers including General Dynamics, Motorola, Oracle, Research In Motion and Unisys. Founded in 1985, Certicom’s corporate offices are in Mississauga, ON, Canada with worldwide sales and marketing headquarters in Reston, VA and offices in the US, Canada and Europe. Visit www.certicom.com

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Forward-Looking Statements
Except for historical information contained herein, this news 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, 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 principal 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 fourth 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 Canadian securities regulatory authorities.

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