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October 20, 1997, Section: News

Encryption Start-Up Serves Servers

By Charlotte Dunlap

Sunnyvale, Calif. -- A new encryption start-up, launching today, aims to provide a service that verifies the validity of digital certificates in realtime and offer toolkits and servers to VARs.

Staffed with a "Who's Who" of cryptography, ValiCert Inc., based here, will sell its toolkits to developers of commerce systems for added security. It also has signed deals with vendors, including Netscape Communications Corp., to embed ValiCert's encryption server technology into the vendors' servers. And finally, the company will provide a service to anyone involved in communicating via digital certificates, to immediately determine the validity of X.509 digital certificates.

"The core of our technology is the mathematical and cryptographic data infrastructure, called a certificate revocation tree," said Chini Krishnan, chairman, chief technology officer and founder of the company.

The technology securely transfers updated information regarding digital certificates to every computer on its server. ValiCert's technology is able to differentiate between valid and compromised digital certificates, he said.

Digital certificates are encrypted electronic "signatures" that attach the identification of a person or company to their electronic message or transaction.

Also on the ValiCert team are Paul Kocher, co-founder and chief scientist, who designed the cryptography for Netcape's current security technology, Secure Sockets Layer; and Marty Hellman, the co-inventor of public key cryptography, known as Diffie-Hellman.

The ValiCert Toolkit will be offered to VARs and software developers for an annual licensing fee of $995.

Vendors, including Netscape will release a plug-in for the technology in future versions of its SuiteSpot servers. ValiCert initially will conduct field trials of its verification service, with broad availability slated for 1998.