Certicom Earn FIPS 186-2 Validation for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm

This validation is particularly valuable for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and software vendors who sell to government organizations. By using Certicoms ECDSA implementation in their products, they meet FIPS requirements without undergoing the time-consuming and costly testing process. ECDSA is used to build in digital signature functionality and is a faster alternative to legacy algorithms. For the cryptography community, and in particular proponents of ECC, the testing of ECC as part of the FIPS validation process is a significant step in the adoption of this public key cryptosystem. Considered a benchmark for security in government, a FIPS validation assures users that a given technology has passed rigorous testing by an accredited third party lab as set out by the National Institute of Standards for Technology (NIST) and can be used to secure sensitive information. Typically, it drives wide-scale adoption in government and in commercial sectors, particularly in the financial and healthcare sectors that recognize the significance of FIPS validation. This milestone in ECCs evolution follows last years announcement from the National Security Agency (NSA) that ECC is a crucial technology. Both events are part of the U.S. Governments crypto modernization program. ECC is a computationally efficient form of cryptography that offers equivalent security to other competing technologies but with much smaller key sizes. This results in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings, thereby making it ideal for todays resource-constrained environments. Certicom is considered a pioneer in ECC research and implementations, backed by 20 years of experience. The company developed the industrys first toolkit to include ECC, which has since been adopted by over 300 organizations. Tomorrow it will host the Certicom ECC Conference 2004, the first-ever conference that brings together Elliptic Curve Cryptography researchers, industry experts and users. During the two-day conference, participants from North America, Europe and Asia will discuss the evolution of ECC and share best implementation practices and insights for future applications.