Entrust Technologies Inc started to address the thorny issue of security in a wireless world yesterday, with the launch of the first commercial Wireless Application Protocol digital certificate service. The company is targeting wireless banking, e-commerce and travel applications with the service
The Plano, Texas-based firm’s business unit, Entrust.net will issue public key infrastructure (PKI) certificates that can be held on a WAP server. Currently, the system requires user identification and a password to be entered on the wireless device, which is verified by the certificate on the server side. Robert Grapes, group product manager of the internet appliances group at Entrust, said that the company was planning to deliver client-side certificates next year.
Currently, Entrust only supports the Nokia WAP server because it has implemented the wireless transportation layer security (WTLS) protocol. However, Grapes said that Entrust was talking to Phone.com and Ericsson and would be supporting their WAP servers.
Grapes described the Entrust.net online service as the first phase in the company’s strategy to bring PKI technology into the wireless world. Next year, the company will add WAP support to their Entrust PKI software, for companies that want to issue and manage their certificates. The company is also developing an Entrust toolkit for WTLS for developers that want to build WAP certificate support into their own applications.
