15 August 1996 ISODE Consortium Delivers an X.509 Certification Authority The ISODE Consortium has delivered a new security management tool, Caviar, designed to create and manage a Certification Authority (CA) for the deployment of the X.509 Authentication Framework. Caviar, a Tcl/Tk utility, enables an administrator to effectively manage public keys and certificates so that data transmission can be provided securely across networks. The tool allows the administrator to create a CA, to generate, locate and revoke certificates, to manipulate user keys, and to construct certificate revocation lists. Public key cryptography is widely used to deliver secure data transmission. The generation and control of public keys, however, require management, and for this purpose, X.509 describes the notion of a 'trusted' authority referred to as the Certification Authority. The CA is responsible for endorsing the identity of users whose details may be held in the X.500 Directory, and the CA issues a certificate to authenticate the user's name and public key. The Caviar tool, using an intuitive graphical user interface, enables an administrator to create and manage these certificates easily. Tcl/Tk is a graphical scripting language openly available from Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Scripting languages provide inherent flexibility and extensibility, and Tcl/Tk is portable to a wide range of UNIX (X Windows) and Microsoft (Windows) platforms. Behind the graphical user interface, Caviar has an underlying command mode tool kit, which can be used if individual commands may more easily integrate into operational environments. Furthermore, Tcl/Tk allows a high degree of customization, which enables ISODE Consortium customers to develop their own scripts and graphical user interfaces for specific applications based on Caviar. The ITU-T, through X.509, recommend strong authentication based on public key cryptosystems as the basis for providing secure services. The ISODE Consortium uses X.509 as the core of its security strategy. X.509 provides a flexible, scaleable and manageable algorithm-independent authentication infrastructure, which can be used as the basis for a wide range of security services such as message encryption and access control. The ISODE Consortium is the leading supplier of source technology for open messaging, directory and security services. The primary server products are an Internet/X.500 Directory Server, an Internet/X.400 Message Transfer Agent, and a Message Store. These products provide connectivity within and between organizations in a multi-vendor environment. The ISODE Consortium has a world-wide customer base of over 170 clients including some of the largest commercial value-added resellers, service providers and research organizations. For further information please contact: Gill Greenwood, International Marketing Communications Manager ISODE Consortium Limited, The Dome, The Square, Richmond, TW9 1DT, UK Telephone: +44 181 332 9091 Fax: +44 181 332 9019 Internet: g.greenwood@isode.com WWW: http://www.isode.com/ ISODE is a trademark of ISODE Consortium Limited UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto