Even though public key infrastructure and digital signature technology is readily available and quite mature, there are few off-the-shelf E-business applications that include PKI capabilities, making implementation a challenging project for IT managers.

That may change soon. Pescatore says adoption of public key infrastructure will speed up as Microsoft's Windows 2000, which has PKI built in, gains market share. Digital signatures will become relatively routine by 2003, when more than half of business desktops will be running Win2000, Gartner predicts.

"The killer application for PKI is the digital signature, and that's a year and a half to three years away," Pescatore says. That delay will give companies time to learn how to secure PKI adequately and run applications using digital signatures safely.

Also helping to speed the adoption of public key infrastructure are a number of products that are designed to help IT managers implement PKI without investing the time and money to tackle the process in-house, analysts say. One method, known as public key enabler software, lets users "snap in" the technology to their applications.

Other products address interoperability issues among proprietary products and certificate authority services, according to research firm Hurwitz Group. "Utilizing public key enabler software can yield savings of 50% to 60% on the three-year cost of integrating applications with PKI," says a recent Hurwitz report.

"Integrating PKI into applications is difficult," says Mike Rothman, executive VP of SHYM Technology Inc. "We want to make it easier for organizations and users to apply digital certificates to their enterprise applications by streamlining the process of PKI-enabling application." Using SHYM's software environment, widely used applications from vendors, including PeopleSoft and SAP, can be outfitted with digital signature technology without costly custom integration.

SHYM's PKEnable--which consists of application links, an integration layer, provider interfaces, and a server--lets users add enhanced security functions such as encryption, authentication, and nonrepudiation to packaged and custom applications. Pricing for a pilot package for as many as 25 users starts at around $5,000.

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