ARX Announces Electronic Signature Solution Featuring CoSign and National Semiconductor's SafeKeeper

ARX, a leading provider of electronic signature applications, announced today a solution based on ARX’s CoSign® product and National Semiconductor’s SafeKeeper™ security technology.

CoSign is an innovative, digital-signature infrastructure product that allows easy deployment and a very solid Return on Investment (ROI) model for a large number of applications. CoSign is a turnkey solution that provides its users with zero-management and a seamless integration with leading applications. CoSign, first announced in April 2002, is being evaluated today by a number of organizations and is expected to be officially released in the first quarter of 2003.

National’s SafeKeeper security technology ensures trustworthy computing in client, server, networking, and communication platforms. The PC21100 trusted platform module (TPM) is the first National co-processor featuring the SafeKeeper enhanced security functionality that supports version 1.1 of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) security specification. The TPM provides protected storage of cryptographic and sensitive data, authenticates a host computing device by verifying its identity to other computing devices, and supplies metrics that provide a reliable and trusted network environment.

The combination of CoSign and SafeKeeper will allow users to manage the signing keys centrally, using CoSign technology, and store them on the end-user machine using the SafeKeeper technology. This will allow easy management of the electronic-signature infrastructure while still ensuring that each user maintains his or hers personal signing key.

“The combination of the CoSign and SafeKeeper technologies is the best way to manage signing keys in a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) electronic signature system,” says Motty Alon, VP Marketing for ARX. “The technologies provide the advantages of central management while still keeping the signing keys under control of the user in a secure environment. The system reduces TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and complies with electronic signatures’ legislation around the world.”

"National values ARX’s advanced security technology,” says Zeev Heller, Notebook and Security Business Unit Director at National Semiconductor. "ARX’s CoSign with PCs hardened by National’s SafeKeeper technology provide an ideal advanced electronic signature solution.”

Both ARX and National are members of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), a collaboration of hardware, software, communications and technology vendors, that together work on building specifications and implementing an enhanced hardware- and operating system-based trusted computing platform that implements trust into client, server, networking and communication platforms.

The new electronic signature solution will be available from ARX during the latter half of 2003.