Product's promoters seek buyers

By PETER GRIFFIN

E-commerce company Esolutions is looking to generate business reselling digital certificates to the country's largest information gatekeepers, but the Government is unlikely to be among its top customers.

Esolutions has signed a reseller agreement with ESign Australia - a key player in providing digital certificates to Government departments in Australia - that will see the company sell digital certificates and public key infrastructure (PKI) to Government departments and corporates predominantly in the financial and health sectors.

But Brendan Kelly, of the E-government Unit, said that while draft papers on PKI recommended Government departments use digital certificates for passing sensitive information between departments, the present need for them was limited.

He said a project due to report back by April next year would determine whether the use of digital certificates should extend to businesses and citizens.

"At the moment there doesn't appear to be a significant widespread need for the deployment of digital certificates."

But research commissioned by Esolutions shows possibly more scope for the company in pursuing large corporations. A survey carried out by Phoenix Research shows 79 per cent of New Zealand businesses do not encrypt files - hiding the file data so that it can be recovered only by reversing the encryption.

Banks are among the strongest local users of digital certificates. A group of financial institutions, including ANZ, have banded together with Identrus, an organisation setting standards for inter-bank communication.

Across the Tasman the rapid uptake of digital certificates has largely been driven by the Australian Government with its "Gatekeeper" standards, a central strand of e-government plans that allow for companies such as ESign to become certificate authorities, able to issue digital certificates to Government departments.

New Zealand has a similar set of standards in SEE (secure electronic environment), but the Government's adoption of digital certificates for its departments has been much less widespread.

One of the country's largest public-facing Government departments, the Inland Revenue Department, has shied from using digital certificates in transactions with businesses, after technical glitches left many users unable to send financial details.

Bryre Patchell, manager of the IRD's business direct unit, said big problems had been encountered with digital certificates when they were introduced to the department's ir-file system, which allowed more than 12,000 employers to file their payroll records online but was abandoned last August.

Many users' systems would not accept the digital certificates which conflicted with versions of the web browsers Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator and some non-windows-based systems.

The glitches had generated a huge number of costly calls to the IRD's telephone support centre.

"Digital certificates are not on the near horizon. We have to bear in mind the problems Inland Revenue had in developing a digital certificate solution catering to the more sophisticated end of the market."

Mr Patchell said ir-file's successor, ir-file2, did not employ digital certificates but a user name and password system protected by 128-bit encryption.

"It's the standard used in banking. It's robust enough for us at present and will be when we roll out other services in the near future."

But ESign's managing director, Gregg Rowley, said that through a more proprietary system, the Australian Tax Office has managed successfully to issue thousands of digital certificates to Australian businesses filing GST returns online.

Mr Rowley, said the certificates which Esolutions will resell range in cost from a few dollars to tens of dollars based on the quantity bought.

David Young, chief executive of Baycorp ID Services, a certification authority, said the Government's experience of digital certificates had been tainted by ir-file, but that other departments were already successfully deploying certificates.

"It's unfortunate for commercial taxpayers around the country that Inland Revenue's experience of ir-file didn't work out first time round. We believe digital certificates offer taxpayers and others who access Government services online better security when they are installed properly," he said.

" We've got clients such as ACC and the Treasury who are making it work."

The reseller agreement comes to life as Esolutions puts the finishing touches on its own SecureKey product, which will be aimed at the private sector and allow companies to become their own certification authority, issuing certificates to employees and online business partners.

Gatekeeper and SEE are not common standards, something that may have to change.

A Government draft paper on PKI said: "There is increasing activity internationally in the area of cross-recognition. As the Government PKI schemes of the two countries, both SEE and Gatekeeper are likely to be involved in such activity at some stage."

Esolutions' channel and communications manager, Sue McCarthy, was silent on Esolutions progress in talking to the Government, and customer relationships have yet to be established with corporates.

Digital certificates, she said, would protect confidential information such as credit card numbers, online forms and financial data transferred online.

Links


Secure Electronic Environment

Government Public Key Infrastructure

eSign

Verisign

esolutions

Identrus