As Security Dynamics Technologies Inc (SDI) (NASDAQ: SDTI) launches its
Keon public key infrastructure (PKI) products, the provider of enterprise
network and data security solutions is gearing up for expansion in Asia.
“We are expanding heavily through Asia,” said Simon Naylor, Security
Dynamics vice president, Asia Pacific. “In Hong Kong , we will be opening
our new office at the end of the month.”
The Hong Kong office will be staffed with five personnel and will cover the
Greater China market. A Beijing office will be opened in September of this
year with a second branch in Australia being set up in Sydney sometime this
year.
Although the network security firm only sells through partners, it already
has offices in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Brisbane, and a regional office in
Singapore with total regional staff to be around 30 after the new additions.
“Even though the region is having a hard time, we believe that it’s going
to bounce back,” commented Naylor.
“If you look across the region, our largest customer sector is banking and
finance. The second largest sector is telcos and ISPs,” said Naylor. “Then,
its the general commercial sector and government organizations.”
In Hong Kong, the company has recently acquired the Customs & Excise
Department as a client which has a requested a complete enterprise security
system.
In Singapore, SDI provides its identification and authentication products
and services to the Ministry of Manpower, the Housing Development Board,
Singapore Press Holdings, DBS Bank, the Land and Transport Authority,
Abacus, and Singapore Telecom.
Globally, SDI is known as a provider of two-factor user identification and
authentication with allegedly over 4 million user in 3,000 organizations
utilizing its SecurID and ACE/Server products.
Used in conjunction with the ACE/Server, the SecurID credit card size
token, with a seed record that is common to the server, generates a new
access number every 60 seconds. Only a combination of this new number and a
PIN number gains access to the network.
After buying RSA Data Security Inc., the
standard-bearer in encryption technologies, in 1996, SDI has been able to
provide a useful combination of standard authentication and encryption
technologies and application security and access control–leveraging the
two types of skill sets off each other.
With RSA as a subsidiary, SDI has developed a new family of PKI software
products, branded as Keon and designed for issuing and managing digital IDs
over corporate networks and the Internet.
Keon includes a certificate server, used by a certificate authority (CA) to
issue certificates, toolkits, and an overall PKI framework that can be
embedded in computer applications.
The products are designed for enterprise customers, software developers,
and equipment manufacturers that can use the new RSA technology in their
own products.
“Keon products are designed to address many of today’s security needs–from a certificate server that developers can build into their
applications, to an enterprise PKI supplying digital certificates for Web
commerce applications,” said Naylor.