Cambridge, MA, Jan 3 -- Security Dynamics plans to license "Concryption," a just patented technology combining encryption and compression, to outside companies for use with a variety of security and compression protocols, revealed Kenneth Weiss, chairman and chief technical officer. "It is my belief that Concryption will solve the two biggest problems that exist today: the need for privacy and more available bandwidth," Weiss said. "Compression has been catching on. It takes less time today to send a whole page of fax than it used to, for example, and part of that is because of better data compression. But encryption has not caught on in the way it should, because of time and expense issues and the hassles of key management." Still, though, available bandwidth for data storage and transmission is diminishing all the time, in arenas ranging from fax to satellite technology, networked information, and the World Wide Web, according to the company chairman. Compression will become an even more significant requirement in the future, with an anticipated explosion of multimedia applications, he predicted. Security Dynamics has been awarded US Patent No. 5,479,512 for Concryption. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company now holds a total of 14 patents from the US Patent Office, most related to its "core business" of computer security, he reported. One of the company's other patents, for instance, is for a biometric technology designed to enable "voice fingerprinting." Security Dynamics also produces the SecureID Card, ACE/Server, and ACM series of user authentication products. Security Dynamics' newly patented Concryption technology is based on mathematical synergies between the processes of encrypting and compressing data. Both procedures call for analyzing arrays of binary patterns, "seeing where the spaces are," and then applying rules to the data. Weiss added that encryption and compression are both highly intensive in terms of CPU (central processor unit) cycles and disk accesses. As a result, he asserted, integrating the two technologies into a "single set of operations" will bring cost reductions in CPU usage as well as faster encryption times. "The time to compress might increase a little bit, but on the other hand, the time to encrypt goes to zero. Whatever the disk accesses are for compression, there would be no other disk accesses for encryption." Security Dynamics sees Concryption as a "concept pattern" suited to use with a variety of data types, network transports, and security protocols, according to Weiss. "This is a new enabling technology that we believe should have an impact on the way information is communicated in the future." The company intends to work with outside licensees on integrating different compression and encryption methods. "Big users have already optimized compression for their unique technologies. We use a different form of compression for fax than we would for satellite data or TV pictures. Beyond that, companies might employ different compression algorithms. Similarly, people like to have control over the type of encryption used," Weiss maintained. Although forthcoming multimedia applications will require much greater compression than text, conventional needs for "privacy" may not be as high, since many video offerings of the future will be geared to entertainment, Weiss acknowledged. "But we will probably be seeing 'economic privacy,' " the company chairman noted, pointing to a trend, already well established in the cable TV industry, toward providing "high demand" fare such as first-run movies only on separately priced, encrypted, "premium channels." Contact: Security Dynamics, 617-547-7820