A small UK research company is poised to introduce a new secure transaction technology that it believes outstrips other offerings on the market. London-based Indicii Salus has developed Xenophon, named for a famous Greek equestrian, based on the Public Key Infrastructure to enable secure trading over the internet. The company’s founder and chief executive Paran Chandrasekaran started work on Xenophon back in 1993, as a postgraduate at the Information Systems Group at Holloway University. The company now has a staff of 23 and a market capital of 9.75m pounds, thanks to the investment of 3i Group. Xenophon, unlike the much talked about Secure Electronic Transaction protocol, or SET as it is commonly referred to, is a multicast system, which means transactions can be sent from one point to several ‘recipients’, unlike SET’s point-to-point approach where there can be just one sender and one receiver. Version 1.0 of Xenophon uses one of two security infrastructures; either the familiar and widely adopted Secure Sockets Layer or Indicii Salus’ own Xeno Architecture Secure Communications layer. XenoASC, according to Chandrasekaran is more secure because there is no way the server can be tricked by the client machine into thinking that the person making or receiving the transaction is the genuine user, when in fact they are not. But Chandrasekaran adds, I’m not thinking for one minute that I’m going to tell the world that this is better because it’s not my job. When Chandrasekaran started work on Xenophon he wanted to make it as accessible as possible, and has therefore developed it so it is completely cross-platform, so much so it will even run on Microsoft Corp’s new Palm PC devices (CI No 3,345). Chandrasekaran describes Xenophon as a cross platform, interoperable, digital signature and encryption-based corporate security tool which enhances or builds a Public Key Infrastructure. The product is modular and can be stripped down so it acts as just a point-to-point communications device, but Chandrasekaran is particularly proud of its internet security capabilities which rivals the Secure Electronic Transaction protocol. But, unlike a great many other organizations within the industry (CI No 3,363), Chandrasekaran will not condemn SET. He said: SET is the first generation of secure transaction systems, and it has created a large sense of awareness and the whole security industry is grateful for it. But he went on to say it will have to change radically if it is going to go ahead and be widely adopted. Xenophon will be targeted at the finance, legal, accountancy and advertising sectors, but as of yet Indicii Salus has no means of selling it. It is likely the company will go to a third party operation and forge an original equipment manufacturers agreement. But Indicii Salus is keeping its cards close to its chest, and although it admits it has been approached by a host of interested vendors, it isn’t giving anything away.
