At RSA, ECC Leaders Discuss Plans to Advance Industry Adoption of Next-Gen
Encryption
SAN FRANCISCO, RSA Conference, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun
Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), the creator of the Solaris(TM) operating
system (Solaris OS), today announced that Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)
is now interoperable across multiple platforms, including Solaris OS,
Windows and Linux. Spearheaded by Sun Labs, Certicom, Microsoft and Red Hat
under the ECC Interoperability Forum umbrella, completion of this large
undertaking helps ensure that ECC products from these vendors will
integrate seamlessly, providing end-to-end security for customers. Leading
security companies like RSA and VeriSign have joined the ECC
Interoperability Forum, as have open source software projects like Mozilla
and Apache.
For years, RSA has been the industry standard for public-key
cryptography. Today's 1024-bit RSA keys are expected to double by 2010,
putting a very large load on both clients and servers, slowing secure
on-line transactions, and greatly exceeding the computational and memory
constraints for wireless, mobile devices. ECC offers the same level of
security as RSA while using smaller keys. Smaller keys result in faster
computations as well as memory, energy and bandwidth savings. The National
Security Agency (NSA) has endorsed ECC as the public-key technology of
choice for protecting sensitive U.S. Government information. Security
sensitive organizations worldwide are expected to follow the NSA's lead and
embrace ECC in a big way, especially in the wake of regulatory requirements
such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
"Security is an industry-wide concern that affects nearly every IT
company and customer. The full value of a new security technology can only
be realized if that technology is deployed broadly and the deployed
implementations inter-operate seamlessly," said Vipul Gupta, Distinguished
Engineer, Sun Labs. "By teaming with Microsoft, Red Hat, Certicom and
others, we were able to extend ECC interoperability to Solaris OS, Windows
and Linux -- the world's most pervasive operating systems. With the
interoperability hurdle cleared, our customers can immediately start taking
advantage of the significant performance and security benefits offered by
ECC."
For more than five years, the Next-Generation Cryptography team at Sun
Labs has been investigating ECC and exploring its potential. Sun Labs'
numerous contributions to the development and industry adoption of ECC
include:
*Open source code contributions of ECC functionality to OpenSSL/Apache and
Firefox/Mozilla, Leading the effort to get ECC standardized within secure
socket layer (SSL/TLS), the Internet's dominant security protocol. This
open specification has now been published as IETF RFC 4492 and is
implemented in security products from major technology vendors and open
source projects, and
*Building ECC into Sun Java Web Server(TM) 7.0, Java(TM) SE platform 6.0
and recently taped-out Niagara2 processors
Sun and ECC at RSA Conference 2007
ECC will be discussed at 4:10 p.m. on February 6th at RSA (Moscone
Center, San Francisco) in a panel titled "ECC/Suite-B in TLS: Lessons
Learned, Challenges Ahead." Sun's Vipul Gupta will be joined by moderator
Margaret Salter of the National Security Agency and fellow panelists Bill
Lattin of Certicom, Ari Medvinsky of Microsoft, and Robert Lord of Red Hat.
The panel will focus on the important new application of elliptic curve
cryptography (ECC) in Transport Layer Security (TLS) and talk about the
industry factors that have spurred this change toward adopting new
cryptographic standards.
Encryption expert Whitfield Diffie, Chief Security Officer at Sun, will
participate in the Cryptographers Panel on Tuesday, February 6 at 10:45
a.m. Also speaking at RSA are Sun engineers Glenn Brunette, Eve Maler,
Ramesh Nagappan, and Pat Patterson.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer"(TM) -- guides Sun in
the development of technologies that power the world's most important
markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is
at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun
can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at sun.com .
Subscribe to Sun newswire at http://sun.com/news .
NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo Solaris, Sun Java Web Server,
Java, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other
countries.
CONTACT:
Carolyn Rohrer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
415/294-5084
carolyn.rohrer@sun.com
SOURCE Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.sun.com
CONTACT:
Carolyn Rohrer of Sun Microsystems, Inc.,
+1-415-294-5084, or carolyn.rohrer@sun.com
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