Irish e-security firm Baltimore Technologies has introduced the first public key-based (PKI) service to comply with the newly established Dutch e-government initiative to secure government-to-business and government-to-government communications.
Baltimore worked with DigiNotar, a Dutch Trusted Third Party using Baltimore’s UniCert security technology. The service issues digital certificates on smartcards to enterprises and government departments to enable them to transact securely online with various government bodies.
The system eradicates the need for Dutch government departments to deploy their own PKI infrastructure. As well as this, the project removes the complexity typically involved in PKI infrastructure deployments and enables pilot e-security projects to be implemented almost immediately and paves the way for larger scale project rollouts.
Tony de Bos, managing director of DigiNotar, explains: “With this service, enterprises and government departments can deploy digital certificates based on the Dutch e-government directive in an easy and cost-effective manner. We see this as an important step in the development of digital government with the necessary trust levels developed and implemented by DigiNotar and supported by Baltimore.”
Baltimore’s senior vice president for EMEA, Patrick Jourdas, said: “The service facilitated a rapid time to market for digital signature services, to enable secure communications with government. The introduction of PKI-enabled applications for the government sector will now be more readily accessible using these Dutch government-compliant certificates based on UniCert technology.”
Once a FTSE 100 darling, Dublin-based Baltimore has had a rough two years and has struggled to right itself financially. As part of this the company has actively initiated an asset sell-off, which recently culminated in the sale of its UK-based hardware operation to Bray-based AEP Systems for €6.2m in September.
By John Kennedy
