Cylink gives away encryption kit

[owner-cypherpunks@toad.com]

  Cylink to offer free SDK for
  embedding encryption security 

  By Jessica Davis 
  InfoWorld Electric 



  Posted at 1:21 PM PT, Mar 29, 1996 
  Lobbing the latest bomb in a patent war over public key/private key
  encryption technology, Cylink Corp. will offer a Software Developers Kit
  (SDK) free-of-charge so that software companies can embed security and
  encryption technologies in their products. 

  Cylink's move to offer Passport Gold for free follows a failed attempt in
  federal court to stop another company, RSA Data Security Inc., from
  selling a similar kit allegedly based on Cylink patents. 

  The two companies have been engaged in a public relations feud, as well as
  a federal court patent dispute and IS mind share war over public key/private
  key/certificate authority encryption technology. Cylink lost the latest round
  in federal court in early March. 

  Cylink and RSA both participated in the creation of public key/private key
  technologies through their partnership, Public Key Partners. PKP was
  formed in 1990 to establish security standards to license to software
  vendors. The partnership fell apart over the patent dispute. 

  Cylink's PassportGold modules and APIs allow software developers to
  enable their applications to access national certificate authority electronic
  commerce and correspondence services that are planned by the U.S. Postal
  Service's ECS system and other commercial certificate authority facilities. 

  Cylink expects its revenue stream to come from a series of products,
  existing and planned, that enhance the speed and effectiveness of such
  encryption technologies. Cylink has also announced SecureFrame, one of
  those products that provides a high-speed data encryption and security
  system for frame relay-based Wide Area Network environments. 

  Working in conjunction with any public or private frame relay network,
  Secure Frame dynamically encrypts data while authenticating its source and
  destination, delivering throughput of up to 2.048 Mbps. 

  SecureFrame is priced at $5,995 and will ship in April. 

  Cylink also introduced SecureNode, an SNMP and TCP/IP-based data
  security hardware and software card for secure end-to-end data transfer
  and communication. The PC card is available now and provides network
  independent security management at the desktop level without hitting users
  with crippled CPU performance by acting as an "encryption and
  authentication accelerator." 

  SecureNode cards for ISA or for PCI are priced at $595 and $695
  respectively. The standalone software product is priced at $199. 

  Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Cylink can be reached at (800) 533-3958 or
  http://www.cylink.com/. 

                                                                                       

                                                                                       

                                                                                       

                                                                                      

                                                                                      

                                                                                      

                                                                                      

                                                                                      

                                                                                      


Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Electric News Editor Dana Gardner.

                     Copyright � 1996 InfoWorld Publishing Company