PKI Forum News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For further information:
Judith Vanderkay
781-876-6208
jvanderkay@virtualmgmt.com

PKI Forum Marks First Anniversary with Annual Member Meeting

Wakefield, Mass., Feb. 28, 2001 - The PKI Forum, Inc., a multi-vendor and end-user industry consortium created to accelerate the adoption of Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies (www.oasis-pki.org) will celebrate the successful conclusion of its first year with its second annual member meeting, to be held March 13-15 in San Jose, Calif.

The PKI Forum's broad range of first-year activities included a successful series of interoperability workshops, development of a resource-rich Web site, launching and maintaining momentum in its Technical and Business Working Groups, numerous presentations at public conferences, and well-attended quarterly member meetings across the four corners of the world. All the PKI Forum's activities have been delivering on its original mission to increase market awareness of the benefits of Public-Key Infrastructure and to demonstrate practical improvements in multi-vendor product interoperability.

"The PKI Forum's numerous interoperability initiatives over the past year help to accelerate the reality of a secure e-commerce infrastructure based on PKI," said PKI Forum Chairperson Derek Brink of RSA Security. "The PKI Forum is playing a role no individual company can play, by acting both as a catalyst and as a neutral forum for industry cooperation."

Deliverables from the organization's first year of work will be distributed at the members meeting. These will include:

• Interoperability Progress Reports
  • Certificate Management Protocol (CMP) Interoperability
  • Application Certificate Interoperability
• PKI Notes
  • Interoperability Framework
  • PKI Policy
  • US Healthcare
• PKI White Papers
  • Introduction to PKI
  • CA-CA Interoperability
• PKI Policy Principles
• PKI Tutorial
• Working Group Updates
  • Technical Working Group
  • Marketing & Education Working Group
  • Application Working Group
  • Policy & Privacy Working Group
  • Best Practices Working Group

Other highlights of the March 2001 members meeting will be a panel discussion with prominent PKI analysts to examine the role PKI plays in constructing a reliable e-security infrastructure, a panel of forward-looking senior executives from leading PKI vendor and service organizations, a panel of PKI Forum members representing end users of PKI, two days of working group breakout sessions, and annual elections for the PKI Forum Executive Board and Working Group Chairs.

Founded in December 1999 by five organizations, the PKI Forum has grown to almost 100 members just 12 months after its first meeting. Member companies represent 12 countries spanning four continents, with a range of PKI vendors, service providers, consultants, end users and application developers.

Due to the rapid growth in members within the first year, the PKI Forum recently took the step of incorporating as an independent not-for-profit organization. The organization has retained Lisa Pretty as President for the upcoming year and additionally has engaged professional consortium management and marketing communications services.

"The strong support that we have attracted from the leading software and hardware vendors validates our vision of providing a secure foundation for building e-commerce solutions and delivering value to end-user organizations," said Lisa Pretty, President of the PKI Forum. "We urge companies involved in any aspect of PKI to join us and help to develop and deliver our programs and initiatives for promoting PKI-based solutions with multi-vendor interoperability."

Although PKI Forum meetings are intended for members only, organizations interested in becoming members may attend one meeting for a nominal meeting fee. Registration for the meeting is open on-line at www.oasis-pki.org.

About Public-Key Infrastructure
A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a combination of hardware, software, policies and procedures. It provides the basic security required to carry out electronic business so that users who do not know each other, or are widely distributed, can communicate securely using a chain of trust. End users of PKI cross industry lines and include anyone from the small office/home office client to large corporations, and from complex businesses to specific verticals.

About the PKI Forum, Inc.
The PKI Forum is an international, not-for-profit alliance comprised of technology and service providers, integrators and end-users whose purpose is to accelerate the adoption and use of PKI and facilitate interoperability through multi-vendor testing of industry standards and educational outreach. The PKI Forum advocates industry cooperation and market awareness to enable organizations to understand and exploit the value of PKI in their e-business applications. For more information about the PKI Forum, see the PKI Forum Web site at www.oasis-pki.org.

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