Hewlett-Packard (HP), and its partner GTE CyberTrust, Friday were awarded a HK$17.2 million (US$2.2 million) contract from the Hongkong Post to design, develop and implement a public key infrastructure (PKI).
Scheduled for deployment in December, the PKI provide the Hongkong Post with the ability to serve as a public certification authority (CA).
According to the government, there will be a trial run of the PKI in August with no less than four pilot applications.
The Hong Kong Post plans to use the PKI, designed to be open, flexible and scalable, to support the government’s Electronic Services Delivery scheme which will be launched next year.
Hong Kong’s PKI will also be used to support postal applications and commercial transactions involving banking, finance, telecommunications, entertainment, education and health sectors.
“Today marks a milestone in the development of electronic commerce in Hong Kong,” said P.C. Luk, Postmaster General.
“With the establishment of the PKI and the provision of the public CA service, both the business and the public can enjoy a high level of security of doing business or making transactions on the Internet,” said Luk.
Luk indicated that by obtaining digital certificates issued by Hongkong Post, users can prove their identities and digitally sign in the same way as the paper-based world.
“The PKI can also safeguard both commercial and personal sensitive information sent through the Internet against the risk of unauthorized access, fraud and being tampered with,” Luk remarked.
Since the invitation to tender was issued in February, the Hong Kong government said that it received a total of 13 tenders from 40 companies around the world.
An assessment panel was formed to review the tenders and stringent procedures were conducted to evaluate, among other things, tenderers’ relevant experience in PKI and CA projects, experience in developing electronic commerce applications, and their commitment in promoting electronic commerce in Hong Kong.
