nCipher Delivers Secure e-Commerce Accelerator for Inktomi Traffic Server

nCipher Announces Alliance with Inktomi to Deliver Increased Transaction Speed and Enhanced Security for Inktomi Traffic Server Customers

Cambridge, UK—05 April, 2001—nCipher plc (LSE:NCH), a leading developer of Internet security products for e-commerce and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) applications, today announced the interoperability of its nForce™ secure e-commerce accelerators with the Inktomi® Traffic Server® network cache platform. The interoperability of nCipher’s hardware solutions and Inktomi’s leading caching platform provides customers with a new opportunity to reduce overall latency, remove system bottlenecks and enhance the security of Traffic Server installations that are intended to cache secure content. The integration of each company’s products ensure that deployment cost and time are minimized without compromising overall security.

Driven by customer demand, various network-based applications such as content caches must deal with the inherent performance issues and security challenges presented by the use of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. The increasing proportion of Internet traffic that uses the SSL protocol to encrypt confidential Web communications has given rise to a new generation of more sophisticated, ‘content aware’ approaches to networking. The ability to cache secure content such as price lists, medical files and entertainment media is becoming as valuable as the ability to cost effectively and intelligently cache insecure content. The challenge is how to introduce the capability to handle secure SSL traffic without compromising system performance, a common side effect of security, and without opening a security loophole that threatens the privacy and integrity of the whole system.

Close cooperation between nCipher and Inktomi has resulted in a level of interoperability that ensures that nCipher’s nForce family of secure e-commerce accelerators can be easily added to new or existing Inktomi installations to accelerate caching of secure traffic. nForce performs two important functions. By offloading the compute-intensive tasks associated with establishing confidential, encrypted communications from the caching server itself, nForce increases overall system throughput and reduces wait times for content delivery. In addition, nForce provides a safe hiding place, away from the server itself, to protect the security keys that lie at the core of the SSL protocol. Stolen or compromised encryption keys would allow future and previous secure communications to be overheard and corrupted.

“As a leading Internet infrastructure provider, we work closely with technology companies such as nCipher to offer a range of compatible products and technologies to meet our customers’ unique networking needs,” said Kevin Brown, vice president of marketing, Content Networking Solutions Group at Inktomi. “Inktomi Traffic Server customers choosing to install nCipher’s hardware security modules can now extend the transaction speed and security capabilities already offered through our products.”

“By ensuring that our technology operates with that of leading software providers such as Inktomi, we are making it easy for companies to deploy and follow the best security practices in the industry while saving money by making best use of their existing server resources,” said Richard Moulds, vice-president of marketing at nCipher. “nCipher is particularly well placed to meet the unique needs of content caching and media delivery networks because of its unique ability to scale, enabling secure management of multiple security devices, geographically distributed, all under a centrally defined and yet locally administered security policy.

nCipher’s secure e-commerce accelerators are available as either PCI plug-in cards or as SCSI connected peripheral devices. A single nForce device can boost server performance to support up to 400 new SSL based browser connections per second, an increase of over 20 fold when compared to a typical, unaided server. In the most demanding situations, additional nForce devices can be added to the same server to increase performance even further. The security capabilities provided by nForce have been independently assessed and validated against the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1, a frequently specified benchmark for security devices intended for e-commerce applications. Optionally nForce can be supplied with KeySafe, a sophisticated key management tool presented through an easy to use graphical user interface.

About nCipher
nCipher is a leading developer of Internet security products specifically designed for e-commerce and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) applications. nCipher`s products, which incorporate both hardware and software, help its customers to solve problems of information security, systems scalability and processing speed in e-commerce and PKI applications. In addition, nCipher also offers technical support and professional services. nCipher`s products are particularly well suited to e-business users with high volumes of security-sensitive transactions, such as banking and financial institutions, e-retailers and service providers (ISP/ASPs) and Government agencies.

nCipher is listed on the London Stock Exchange as a TechMARK 100 company under the ticker symbol NCH.L. With offices in Cambridge, UK; Boston, New York and San Francisco, USA; Dublin, Ireland; Paris, France; and Hamburg, Germany, nCipher serves customers and partners in many locations around the world.

For more information on nCipher products and services, visit our Web site at http://www.ncipher.com/.

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nForce, KeySafe and nCipher are trademarks or registered trademarks of nCipher Corporation Ltd in the United Kingdom and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Inktomi, Traffic Server and the tri-colored cube design are trademarks or registered trademarks of Inktomi Corporation in the United States and other countries.