Canadian encryption experts to guard secret U.S. data

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2122967.html?tag=st.ne.1430735..ni

By Reuters
Special to CNET News.com
June 21, 2000, 2:15 p.m. PT

TORONTO--Canada's Kasten Chase has been given the exclusive go-ahead
by the U.S. National Security Agency to safeguard top-secret
government data, which could make the recent theft of computer hard
drives laden with nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory
a nonissue in the future.

Toronto-based Kasten Chase became the first company to be endorsed by
the security agency to encrypt the hard drives, not just the data, the
company said today.

"If those (Los Alamos) devices had our media encrypter, when they were
switched on by anybody that had stolen them, they would have been
absolutely useless," Kasten's chief executive Paul Hyde told Reuters
in a telephone interview.

The only thing preventing the breach of a hard drive today is the
operating system's initial passwords, said Hyde.

"With our system, you could rip that thing to shreds and you couldn't
get to it. There is no way that data would be accessible," he added.

Kasten Chase's RASP Secure Media system is "necessary and sufficient"
to encrypt military, police and intelligence agencies'
mission-critical information to the "classified secret" level, said
Michael Flemming, chief of the National Security Agency's Information
Assurance Solutions Group.

"We are pleased to certify the RASP Secure Media product as meeting
our requirements for encrypting information on computer storage
media," Flemming sai in a statement.

Kasten already has a product in use by about 90 government agencies,
since certification in June 1999, that allows remote users to access
classified data, said Hyde.

Also, Kasten said today that it would integrate its products with
Alcatel's Virtual Private Network, a secure corporate or government
intranet that works through the Internet.

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