Cryptomathic - 25 Years of Innovation in Securing Data

Cambridge, UK - 11  November  2011

To mark Cryptomathic's 25th anniversary this month, Executive Chairman and Founder, Peter Landrock, takes a look back at the key industry milestones that have shaped the security solution provider, and imparts his vision for the challenges that lie ahead.

It is hard to believe that when Cryptomathic was established 25 years ago, the internet and email did not exist for businesses. Their advent and rapid ubiquity quickly brought about a complete transformation at Cryptomathic: from a small consultancy offering advanced crypto engines for systems delivered by other companies, to an advanced software solutions provider serving an international customer base directly.

When the internet arrived, it brought with it a vast increase in fraud and in response, a dire need for heightened data security measures. Cryptomathic was well placed to respond to this need and moved quickly to embrace innovation as a business fundamental, specialising in creating cutting edge products and solutions which both anticipated and answered the rapidly changing requirements of the market.

By the mid 90's, the decision from Europay, MasterCard and Visa to switch from magstripe to chipcard technology had been taken and migration was underway. This resulted in debit and credit chip cards becoming capable of generating a digital signature, enabling them to secure transactions. At the turn of the millennium, Cryptomathic provided a solution to Europay for debit and credit cards. This deal fuelled our growing reputation and paved the way for Cryptomathic to become one of the largest global suppliers of servers for the data preparation of debit and credit applications, whether contact or contactless on payment cards and mobile phones.

In more recent years, levels of on and offline fraud have continued to rise, impacting heavily on the security needs and legislation of banks and other financial institutions. So stringent and complex are these demands, that banks and large companies often lack both the time and experience required to achieve full compliance. To address this issue, over the next twelve months Cryptomathic will be introducing not only solutions, but cryptographic services as well, enabling the company to manage the whole cryptographic process on behalf of its customers in a totally secure manner.  

Another crucial growth area in the security industry stems from the uptake of mobile and cloud computing. Much hyperbole exists in this space, but there is little doubt that cloud based infrastructures face great challenges securing transaction environments. One clear challenge relates to mobile access: how to secure cryptographic payment keys on mobile devices that are notoriously unsecure? Also, will it be possible to establish trustworthy end-to-end security zones within the cloud? The answer to both these questions lies in bootstrapping security into the cloud architectures using existing, isolated, secure stepping stones, without ubiquitous dedicated hardware security. 

The next twelve months will see Cryptomathic tackling these challenges head on, drawing on the efforts and experience gained over 25 years of innovation.