First device Certificate Authority for next-gen crypto

Certicom launched its new Certicom Device Certificate Authority, a managed service offering that issues digital certificates to high-volume device manufacturers that have bulk certificate requirements.  This service will benefit manufacturers that produce devices such as HDTVs, cable set-top boxes, mobile handsets and security-sensitive low-power sensor and control devices. 

As new devices communicate more sensitive data and process critical transactions the need to authenticate device identities has become increasingly important.  Digital certificates issued by a trusted authority provide an enhanced level of authentication that can not be achieved by cryptography alone.
 
Certicom’s service is capable of issuing digital certificates based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), as well as legacy RSA.  ECC offers the most security-per-bit of any public key cryptographic algorithm.  Due to its strength, ECC is being adopted in a growing number of security standards for content protection, wireless networking, and resource constrained applications.

The device certificate authority gives customers the option to obtain ECC-based certificates, including highly compact and efficient Elliptic Curve Qu-Vanstone “Implicit Certificates,” from a trusted commercial authority.  All certificates are issued using policies and procedures that have been developed to the ISO 27001 security standard.   Once a service order has been approved by the customer, and authenticated by Certicom, the order is fulfilled by a Certicom operations team within a Certicom secured facility.