RSA Data Security Inc.
unveiled plans “to jump-start a new generation of secure applications” for
Internet commerce this week at the company’s Data Security Conference in
San Francisco.
RSA said the key to its strategy is its Certificate Security Suite, a set
of high-level security components and tools designed to make developing
secure certificate-based applications faster and cheaper.
RSA reports the Certificate Security Suite will provide commercial and
corporate developers with easy-to-use code modules and APIs for popular
security features, including digitally signed and encrypted data;
authentication using X.509 v3 digital certificates; issuing, using, and
managing digital certificates; and implementing secure storage.
The suite’s components will also support an open, standards-based API that
lets applications “plug-in” to off-the-shelf certificate management products
from a variety of vendors.
RSA will support the Common Security Services Manager (CSSM) API defined in
Intel’s Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA) as a core API for
application/certificate management system interoperability.
“Developers need a much easier way to add standard security features to
secure applications and integrate them into a variety of shared
infrastructure and management systems,” said Jim Bidzos, president of RSA.
“Now we are taking the lead in making security open and much easier to
implement by providing developers with the high-level security components
they need.”
Both IBM and Intel announced support for the
project and all three companies will support each other’s solutions.
RSA said it intends to release code for the Certificate Security Suite to
developers in the second quarter of 1998. Later in the year, RSA also plans
to offer its popular S/MAIL product as an extension to the Certificate
Security Suite for developers creating S/MIME standard messaging applications.
