nCipher Teams With Oracle to Deliver Enterprise Grid Computing Software
WOBURN, MASS—September 9, 2003—nCipher plc (LSE:NCH), a leading provider of cryptographic IT security solutions, announced today that its nForceâ„? and nFast® products now support Oracle® Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g to provide hardware security and SSL acceleration solutions for customers. This announcement illustrates nCipher and Oracle’s continual commitment to delivering secure solutions.
The launch of Oracle 10g software, Oracle’s integrated grid software infrastructure, at the annual OracleWorld San Francisco conference is an important step in delivering on Oracle’s vision of enterprise grid computing, which can dramatically reduce the time, labour and cost of IT management by pooling industry-standard servers, storage and software.
By creating a group of interconnected computing resources that operate as one, the need to establish the identity of all machines in the group becomes paramount along with maintaining privacy of the data. The group as a whole can only be trusted if the membership credentials of each element are secure. As a result grid computing is more secure than isolated islands of computation by establishing consistent security across all elements of the system.
The integration of nCipher’s nForce hardware security module (HSM) into Oracle 10g software enables the grid to function as a single trusted entity. The adoption of hardware-based security measures overcome many of the inherent security concerns associated with generic server platforms. Customers can protect the secret keys used to prove the identity of each machine in the grid and establish secure encrypted connections using the SSL protocol between each machine. nCipher’s nForce HSM has been independently validated to Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 140-2) – one of the most stringent standards in the IT security industry. When used in conjunction with Oracle 10g software this enables enterprises to align their IT infrastructure with established industry best practices.
“Oracle is committed to providing secure solutions and collaborating with partners who share that same approach” said Robert Shimp, vice president, Database Marketing at Oracle. “nCipher’s integration with Oracle 10g software underscores the importance of security, and enables Oracle to deliver against its vision of secure grid computing.”
“Enterprise systems are transitioning to take advantage of more distributed architecture,” says Richard Moulds, vice president marketing at nCipher. “These highly-networked infrastructures present new security challenges. These issues become particularly relevant as new legislation and industry mandates regarding privacy and data security force organizations to demonstrate compliance. It is clear that the use of cryptography to protect these systems and preserve the integrity of the data they handle is becoming a core component of any security infrastructure. We are excited to team with Oracle to provide hardware security and SSL accelerator solutions for our joint customers.”
About nCipher
nCipher is redefining cryptographic security to protect points of risk across the enterprise – from network appliances to Web servers, to custom software applications and back-end databases. nCipher provides hardware and software solutions that enable organizations to implement best practice security by addressing the challenges of cryptographic key management and performance. Many of the world’s leading organizations – from Microsoft and Barclays Bank to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the U.S. Navy – rely on nCipher to deliver a sound e-security infrastructure. nCipher’s products are particularly well suited to organizations with high volumes of security-sensitive transactions, such as banking and financial institutions, government departments, e-retailers and online service providers. nCipher is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:NCH) and is a member of the FTSE TechMARK and FTSE4Good indices with offices in Cambridge, UK; Boston, Seattle, Paris, Hamburg, Singapore and Tokyo. For more information on nCipher, visit www.ncipher.com.