News

Certifier Provides Public Key Infrastructure Management of Virtual Private Networks

SSH Communications Security, a world-leading developer of Internet security technologies, announced today the immediate availability of SSH Certifier 2.0, a PKI product family that provides a complete certificate life cycle management based on Certificate Management Protocol version 2 (CMPv2) and token management system for advanced token based Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) deployment. In addition, SSH announced an agreement with the Information Technology Center at the University of Tokyo. The cooperation includes joint research on IPSec and PKI, which involves the use of SSH Certifier. SSH Certifier will provide University staff and students, altogether 30,000 persons, with secure access to email and other information resources. The Center will also collaborate with SSH in researching large-site application of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks).

Koji Ando of the Information Technology Center says: "Remote use of the independent networks has increased, and our current task is to improve ease of access for users without, however, compromising security. SSH has proven track record of delivering software products that are extremely easy to use and at the same time provide very strong security. SSH is also a major provider of VPN technology, with high usability solutions, such as SSH NAT Traversal."

J. B. Dumerc, President & CEO of SSH Japan, was enthusiastic about the agreement: "SSH Secure Shell, the global benchmark for secure remote logins, is already used for academic security in the United States and many other countries, but we feel very honored to be associated with such a prominent organization as the University of Tokyo's Information Technology Center, in the provision of Certification Authority solutions and other PKI technology."

SSH Certifier product family advances the PKI technology and eases the certificate life-cycle management by implementing CMPv2 in a commercially available PKI product for the first time in the world. The tests within PKI Forum have shown that CMPv2 is the key to an interoperable multi-vendor PKI system.

"The SSH Certifier PKI Product Family is one of the first product families suitable for enabling various PKI deployment schemes - from small departments to large operations such as service providers. The components included in this package bring the PKI to the desktop user in an easy, understandable and cost-effective way," said Tatu Ylönen, founder, chairman and CTO of SSH. "Wide support for standards such as CMPv2 makes the SSH Certifier line of products an excellent choice for organizations looking for a scalable and flexible system for certificate life-cycle management. For VPN vendors, SSH Certifier provides the central PKI management system for simple administration and scalability, along with out-of-the-box applications for immediate usability and benefit."

About SSH Certifier

SSH Certifier builds on the standards and initiatives designed to promote interoperability among different vendors' PKI authentication products and services. SSH is an active participant in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), PKI Forum, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). SSH recently joined the European Forum of Electronic business (EEMA) and is an active participant in EEMA's PKI Challenge. Interoperability tests at the latest PKI Forum were very successful for SSH, demonstrating SSH's technological advancements in PKI. The SSH Certifier product can be used to issue and manage various standards based certificates for both individual users and network devices within VPNs, OEM systems targeting corporate enterprise environments, service providers, finance industry and healthcare. SSH Certifier also features easy-to-use Web-based configuration tools, offering network administrators the ability to manage the PKI from a central or remote location.

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