Cryptomathic Joins MULTOS Consortium

Cambridge, UK - 14  February  2008

Leading security solutions provider, Cryptomathic, has announced its membership of the MULTOS consortium.  It becomes the first and only Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) vendor to join the consortium's membership ranks.

Joining at the Business/Systems Membership Level, Cryptomathic's marketing and technical experts will participate in the MAOSCO Business Advisory Group and the Systems Forum meetings.  From a technical viewpoint, Cryptomathic aims to contribute towards the development of the MULTOS specifications, by sharing specialist knowledge regarding, among other things, encryption standards.

Cryptomathic's intention is to ensure that in addition to supporting MULTOS specifications through its key products - including CardInk, Key Management System and Certification Authority - the company is able to input into the future evolution of the technology.

Cryptomathic is currently finalising its support for the packaging of MULTOS step/one application load units in response to customer demand and this should be completed in February 2008.  MULTOS step/one is the entry level multi-application Operating System for issuers migrating to EMV with Static Data Authentication (SDA).

Professor Peter Landrock, Executive Chairman of Cryptomathic, comments: "Cryptomathic's aim is to offer our customers the widest possible choice of solutions to fit their exact requirements, so it is important that our products are capable of supporting as many applications and platforms as possible.  Our membership to MULTOS has been driven by the need to fully accommodate existing and potential customers using this platform and we look forward to actively engaging with the consortium.  We anticipate that Cryptomathic's vast experience as a security solutions provider and PKI vendor will enable us to offer ideas and recommendations to aid in the enhancement of MULTOS specifications, particularly for the ID card space."

Tim France-Massey, Chairman of the MULTOS Business Advisory Group, adds: "We are happy that Cryptomathic has become a member of the MULTOS Consortium and we welcome the company's plans to support MULTOS through its far-reaching and well established data preparation, key management and Certificate Authority solutions.  This will ultimately lead to more choice for issuers."

Cryptomathic's EMV data preparation product, CardInk, already supports the data preparation of many MULTOS applications including the latest MasterCard Integrated Chip Application (MICA) - which includes PayPass and CAP, plus VSDC and SPAN2.