InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

October 9, 2000

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Motorola, VeriSign Team For Secure Mobile Transactions

Security vendor's technology will allow digital certificates on wireless devices

By Matthew G. Nelson

More on wireless security:

TechWeb: New Technology Secures Wireless For E-Business (9/28/00) InternetWeek: Security Goes Wireless (9/25/00) EETimes: Motorola launches security-processor line at N+I (9/25/00)

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hile many companies see the benefits of giving customers, partners, and employees wireless access to information, they want to be able to authenticate a user's identity before sending sensitive data, such as financial transactions and confidential information, over the airwaves.

"Security has to be a known quantity, so companies will feel a lot easier about using [wireless] devices," says Dennis Gaughan, a senior analyst at AMR Research.

It's no surprise, then, that wire-less device manufacturers are teaming with digital certificate and authentication companies, and supporting the new Wireless Application Protocol version 1.2.1, which promises to address security needs.

Motorola Inc. last week expanded its alliance with VeriSign Inc., a provider of Internet trust services, to let the wireless device manufacturer include digital certificates on wireless Web servers and handsets. The companies are also making it possible to provide certificates to validate pieces of code across networks to wireless devices. Since the WAP 1.2.1 standard provides for devices to download applications, such as Java applets, authenticating the source of such code can assure that users don't download viruses or other unverified security threats.

Financial providers that want to offer wireless services say authentication will be vital. "We think wireless access is going to be indispensable fairly shortly," says Richard Vague, chairman and CEO of Juniper Bank, an online financial company in Wilmington, Del., that offers wireless services. "Given the [small] transaction size we typically have, authentication hasn't been a big issue. But when the transactions get bigger, positive identification will become much more important."

Motorola plans to ship WAP 1.2.1-enabled devices with VeriSign technology early next year.

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