InformationWeek

Online Security Push

MasterCard, AT&T debut Net security plans

By Clinton Wilder
Issue: Jan. 23, 1995

Business use of the Internet is hot, but even hotter is the race to develop the technology that will make financial transactions on the Internet secure enough to put corporate minds at ease.

MasterCard International Inc. and AT&T were just two of the leading companies to announce security products at the annual RSA Data Security Inc. conference Jan. 9-11 in Redwood Shores, Calif.

MasterCard says it will work with Netscape Communications Corp. to develop secure debit and credit transact ions on the Net by mid-year. The two companies are challenging the burgeoning competition, most notably the partnership announced last fall between Microsoft Corp. and credit-card giant Visa International.

"The Internet today is like a party line-anyone can listen in," says Netscape chairman Jim Clark. Netscape (formerly Mosaic Communications Corp.), a Mountain View, Calif., developer of a leading commercial World Wide Web browser, is already working with BankAmerica Corp. to develop secure credit transactions on the Internet.

Other companies working on similar projects include CyberCash Inc. in Vienna, Va., and First Virtual Corp. in San Diego. In addition, AT&T unveiled the Information Vending Encryption System (Ives), designed to protect multimedia content over the Internet as well as cable and satellite networks.

TV Trial
Based on chips designed by AT&T Bell Laboratories and VLSI Technology Inc.--and using RSA encryption algorithms--Ives will first be tested later t his year in AT&T set-top boxes in a Cablevision Systems Corp. interactive TV trial.

To date, most Internet security announcements have focused on making financial transactions secure for banks and consumers. But electronic data interchange (EDI) software provider Premenos Corp. in Concord, Calif., is finalizing a software package called Templar that will make business-to-business EDI exchanges secure enough to travel across the Internet.

"Everyone is crashing into one another trying to make the Net safe for retail electronic commerce," says Premenos chairman Lew Jenkins. "But there's a whole other world of business-to-business transactions out there."

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