Cylink Corporation Partners with U.S. Postal Service to Build National Electronic Commerce System; Secure Electronic Services to Include Postmarking and Authentication for Legal/Medical Records, Tax Filings, Delivery Receipts, Etc

Business Wire, Oct 17, 1996

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 1996--Cylink Corp. (NASDAQ:CYLK), the world's leading provider of network security and management solutions since 1984, today announced its partnership with the United States Postal Service to build a national Electronic Commerce System (ECS).

The ECS will be as easy-to-use and accessible to every American as First Class Mail is today. When operational next year, ECS will be the only system providing sender/recipient authentication, as well as correspondence privacy and protection to the average consumer as well as for businesses nationwide.

Cylink has signed an agreement with the U.S. Postal Service to design, build and test the Postal ECS system. Cylink will provide a total security transaction infrastructure, including client software and distributed server processing. Cylink is the leader in developing scalable public key certificate management systems for robust transaction security and data protection.

The U.S. Postal Service, through ECS, will inaugurate electronic postmarking (date and time stamping) later this year. This postmark will prove that a document existed at a particular point in time, has not been modified since, and will add protection against postal fraud. This service will be offered at roughly one-third the cost of today's First Class postage rates.

In addition to postmarking, ECS will electronically protect and deliver time sensitive or legally binding documents such as notarized and legal documents, purchase orders, medical records, stock transaction receipts, bill payments, as well as other forms of private or proprietary correspondence.

Postal ECS will also offer new electronic postal services such as identity authentication (using digital signatures and a Certificate Authority), verification of service and registered return receipt confirmation. Additional services will be added, such as the archival storage of transaction records and bonded documents.

"The explosive growth of electronic communications, including the use of the Internet, intranets and electronic mail, has created a need to protect, validate and authenticate electronic transmissions using digital signatures and certificate authorities," said Dr. Jim Omura, Cylink's acting chief executive officer and chief technical officer. "Digital signature technology is the foundation for secure electronic transactions between the millions of people who will be conducting commerce on the Internet."

Just as personal identification numbers are used to protect credit cards, Certificate Authorities are tomorrow's mechanism for protecting electronic commerce. Companies that provide services such as electronic banking, data interchanges and credit card purchases are well aware of the need for an advanced digital signature identification system. The Postal ECS will make available these security services to all its customers.

"The U.S. Postal Service would be unable to provide its corporate and individual customers with state-of-the-art security services without using public key cryptography," according to Paul Raines, U.S. Postal Service project manager for ECS. "We selected Cylink as our partner because it has been designing security systems since 1984, incorporating sophisticated encryption technologies that enable the deployment of digital signatures and certificates based on public key cryptography."

The U.S. Postal Service has a 200-year history with the public as the reliable and trusted third party in sending and receiving correspondence.

"We believe ECS is the logical extension of this role in the electronic/digital age, where increasing numbers of our customers are using the information superhighway," Raines said. With more than 40,000 locations nationwide, the U.S. Postal Service offers the public assurance of long-term stability and legally enforceable protection of its transactions.

Cylink's technology will enable the U.S. Postal Service to guarantee to its customers the prevention of unauthorized access and misuse of information within the ECS system. This technology will identify the sender of the correspondence, protect it from unauthorized viewing or manipulation as it moves through public networks, and allow the electronic transmission of tamper-proof, non-forgeable documents.

"Based on our successful history and over 11 years of expertise in developing certificate-based systems for many information network customers, Cylink is in a unique leadership position to design and implement certificate authority security management for other organizations that use the Internet and intranets for private and authenticated communications," Dr. Omura added.

"Cylink intends to market its expertise in this category to commercial organizations and the worldwide network of PTTs [Posts, Telephones & Telegraphs, administered by governments] that will offer similar security management and electronic transaction services to their customers before the year 2000."