Identrus Wins Top Security and Electronic Commerce Honor for Innovative Business-to-Business Internet Commerce Trust Model

Business Wire, Dec 6, 1999

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 6, 1999--

Chartered Institute of Bankers/British Telecom Financial

Technology Award validates company's future benefits for trading

partners around the world

Identrus, the leading provider of identity trust for the Internet, today announced it has won a top honor at the "CIB/BT Financial Technology Awards," the United Kingdom's only awards for financial institutions using technology to improve their businesses.

The Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB), one of the world's leading organizations in training and educating bankers and other financial services professionals, and British Telecom, the UK's premier phone company, presented the award to Identrus on Nov. 10 in London, concluding an Oscar-style banquet. Though a global organization, New York-based Identrus was the only winner based outside the United Kingdom this year. This year's awards attracted more than 100 entries, including a joint undertaking by MasterCard and Europay International that was a finalist in Identrus' category.

Identrus won the security and electronic commerce award for its ground-breaking business-to-business Internet commerce security framework. "We chose Identrus for the top award of the evening because the company is poised to make an enormous impact, not only on banking but on the way the world does business," said Dr. Tony Gandy, a CIB consultant and the director of Technology, Planning and Strategy in London.

John G. Bullard, Identrus' managing director, participant relations and sales, accepted the award. "We're extremely pleased to receive this honor, which validates the collective efforts of our investors and customers, technology vendors, application providers, employees and executives, both current and potential, wherever they exist in the world," Bullard said. "This recognition bodes well for our full commercial launch in 2000."

Approximately 200 business executives with technology and banking backgrounds attended the dinner. Awards were presented in eight categories: electronic delivery, delivery channel engineering, customer development and management, infrastructure re-engineering and technology development, working practices, risk management, payment technology and services, and security and electronic commerce.

Identrus was founded in April by eight of the world's largest global financial institutions. Its growing membership of equity investors includes ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank (including its recent acquisition Bankers Trust), HypoVereinsbank, Industrial Bank of Japan, the NatWest Group and Sanwa Bank.

How Identrus works

Identrus' technology, buttressed by binding contracts and the risk-management experience of global financial institutions, will remove the final obstacle to trusted business-to-business e-commerce: identity trust. With this obstacle removed, companies will be able to use the Internet to open new markets, reduce transaction costs, and create unassailable records of their transactions.

Identrus will issue digital certificates to financial institutions, which will operate as certificate authorities that create and issue digital certificates for corporate customers. These customers, as well as their machines and applications, will use smart cards to digitally sign communications that include Identrus co-branded digital certificates. Through the power of public key cryptography in a hierarchy known as a public key infrastructure (PKI), these digital certificates can conclusively identify parties in a communication, ensure the communications are private, and prove data hasn't changed in transit.

In addition to securing communications and business dealings, financial institutions will use digital certificates to facilitate secure payments and other transactions. Real-time certificate validation systems will confirm the validity of digital certificates at the time a transaction or communication takes place.

About Identrus

Identrus, announced in April 1999, for the first time enables businesses to manage their business-to-business e-commerce risks through a trusted relationship with their financial institution. Identrus also enables corporate trading partners to eliminate the time, cost and complexity of building trust relationships with counterparts around the world. Identrus' legal and technical infrastructure is based on a set of uniform system rules, contracts and business practices for comprehensive trust and risk management. The infrastructure is open to financial institutions, their corporate customers and security vendors around the world. For more information, please visit www.identrus.com