--- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 10:47:01 -0800 (PST) From: William Knowles <erehwon@dis.org> To: DCSB <dcsb@ai.mit.edu> cc: DC-Stuff <dc-stuff@dis.org> Subject: Zions Bancorp to offer Digital Certificates Organization: Home for retired social engineers & unrepented cryptophreaks MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: bounce-dcsb@ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: William Knowles <erehwon@dis.org> [Techweb 1.12.98] Zions Bancorp, a $9 billion regional bank in Salt Lake City, this week will become the first financial institution to offer a service that lets organizations use digital certificates to secure internal and business-to-business communications. Digital certificates, which electronically confirm a user's identity, are generated and managed by certificate authorities. Companies can set up authorities themselves or use authorities created by third parties. Although certificate-authority services are available from technology vendors [such as GTE, IBM, and VeriSign, Zions said customers will feel more comfortable letting a bank manage their digital certificates. "Banks in the paper world already do this. They write letters of credit," said Michelle Jolicoeur, director of government implementations at Digital Signature Trust, the Zions unit that will offer the service. "Our business is trust." Digital Signature Trust has conducted pilots of its service with Utah's Department of Commerce, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and internal departments for about a year. The service uses digital certificate software from several vendors, including Certco, Entrust, GTE, VeriSign, and Xcert. Separately, Certco and Entrust will unveil new features to their certificate-authority offerings at the RSA Data Security conference in San Francisco this week. Oppenheimer Funds, which plans to implement digital certificates by midyear to bolster IT security, is investigating whether to operate its own certificate authority or to outsource. "A bank is generally going to be a more stable company," said Jim Patterson, an Oppenheimer technology vice president in Englewood, Colo. "But on the other hand, do I want a bank that I currently don't have a relationship with to know so much about me?" Still, Patterson said digital certificates will be important in business-to-business commerce and communications. "With digital certificates, I can start getting or sending requests to perform business functions over any medium I want, including the public Internet," he said. Pricing for the Digital Signature Trust service will be subscription-based and will depend on the customer's applications and number of certificates. == The information standard is more draconian than the gold standard, because the government has lost control of the marketplace. -- Walter Wriston == http://www.dis.org/erehwon/ For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>