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November 3, 1997

WorldTalk Wins OK for Encryption Export

[November 3] San Francisco-based Worldtalk Corp. said that the U.S. Department of Commerce has granted the company permission to export WorldSecure Server and Client with strong 128-bit encryption to U.S. subsidiaries in virtually all countries.

All industry sectors were approved including banking and finance, health care, manufacturing, telecommunications, and pharmaceutical.

The license generally allows Worldtalk to export products that support S/MIME-compliant encryption and digital signature technology to foreign subsidiaries and branch offices of companies that are at least 25% owned by a U.S. company.

"From what we've seen on the public record, Worldtalk may be one of the first U.S. companies that has been granted a license to export strong encryption to U.S. subsidiaries in most countries. We are not restricted to certain industry segments," said Bernard Harguindeguy, president and CEO of Worldtalk.

Until now, Worldtalk was restricted by the government to exporting software with 40-bit encryption. Worldtalk's license permits the export of 128-bit RC2 or "strong" encryption, without any requirement of a key recovery mechanism that enables third-party access to the data.