“Our customers want to secure their electronic communications, and they want security NOW. We need to add proven security quickly to our product, but we can’t afford a performance hit.”

Challenge: Device Security

For many companies today, e-mail is probably the most common way that people share information and documents between them, with instant messaging gaining in popularity. With the rise in handheld use, the same security that is used on desktops to secure exchanges of confidential information needs to be extended to PDAs, smart phones and other mobile devices. With these devices, performance is a major concern, and any solution proposed must take this into account.

Solution

To ensure secure communications, e-mail requires authentication and confidentiality. Authentication ensures that the e-mail reaches the intended receiver, while confidentiality ensures that only the intended sender and receiver can access the transmitted information. Security Builder® PKI™ addresses these key e-mail and instant messaging requirements, with support for:

  • all the algorithms necessary for S/MIME (RSA, DSA, Diffie-Hellman, RC2, DES, 3DES)
  • X.509 v3 digital certificates from leading third party Certificate Authorities (VeriSign, Microsoft, Entrust, etc.)
  • S/MIME v3 messaging for signed and/or encrypted e-mail (CMS, PKCS #7)

Standard SSL security is best suited for securing web-based communications such as instant messaging and the Security Builder® SSL™ toolkit integrates with your code base in a matter of hours. This toolkit provides simple APIs that allow developers to quickly implement SSL security functionality on more than 30 platforms with a footprint up to 80% smaller than open source alternatives.

Value

Certicom toolkits integrate quickly into e-mail applications on wireless devices using efficient and strong security that is ideal for secure wireless environments. Adding security expands a vendor’s market to include organizations that require secure e-mail and instant messaging communications and provides a competitive advantage over companies that do not offer security.

Read the Snapperfish secure messaging success story (PDF)