Market leaders seek to break the code

Date: 24/10/1996

WHILE governments slowly come round to the idea of coordinating action on encryption, companies are doing it for themselves.

At the beginning of October, 11 top information technology firms launched a coalition to develop an exportable and global approach to strong encryption in response to the US decision to give them a two-year window of exporting opportunity.

The alliance - comprising Apple Computer, Digital Equipment, Groupe Bull, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NCR, RSA, Sun Microsystems, Trusted Information Systems and UPS - will attempt to develop 'key recovery' solutions to the problem.

“We believe that this alliance will help industry lead in developing solutions for secure transactions while prompting the evolution of the Internet as a business environment,” said Ellen Hancock, Apple's chief technology officer, as she introduced the coalition.

The involvement of industry is essential in the development of these systems, according to EDS' Martyn Lowry.

“If you try to prescribe the sorts of systems that should operate, it will not work. It will push up the costs for the manufacturers and, if there is too much interference, a two-man outfit in a garage will do their own thing anyway,” he said.

The appearance of the only off-the-peg encryption device bears testimony to this. The PGP ('pretty good protection') encryption was released straight on to the Internet for the use of anyone who wanted it as a protest by two men in a garage against the continued use of export controls by the United States.