As part of its effort to bring authentication technology to the wireless world, VeriSign Inc., a provider of Internet trust services, has expanded its alliance with wireless-device manufacturer Motorola Inc., beyond its initial January agreement to include digital certificate systems on wireless Web servers and handsets.

VeriSign, which also has deals with Motorola competitors Nokia and Ericsson, intends to incorporate the company's administrator-user interface and its Wireless Personal Trust Agent with Motorola's handheld devices and gateways to assist in the management of the certificates, as well as to provide certificates to validate pieces of code across networks. As the new Wireless Application Protocol 1.2.1 standard provides for devices to download applications, such as Java Applets, authenticating the source of such codes can protect against viruses or other security threats, according to Paul Healy, senior director of global wireless services for VeriSign.

Financial providers with plans to offer wireless services expect authentication to eventually become essential. "We think [wireless access is] important today, but we think it's going to be indispensable fairly shortly," says Richard Vague, chairman and CEO of Juniper Bank, an online financial company in Wilmington, Del., which is working with Aether Systems to provide wireless banking access. "The size of transactions that we typically deal in, authentication, hasn't yet proven to be that big of an issue. But when the transaction gets much bigger, the positive identification of people is going to become much more important."

Motorola says it will begin shipping WAP 1.2.1-enabled devices with VeriSign technology early next year, but offered no other product details.