Governments, financial institutions and large organisations can now protect their sensitive data with the strongest commercially available cryptography
London: Thales, leader in information systems and communications security has announced that its Datacryptor AP (DCAP) R4.02 network encryption device has received CESG CAPS Certification at Baseline and Enhanced grade. For the first time UK government customers can now make use of the remote keying feature previously only available in commercial versions of DCAP. DCAP R4.02 also now offers support for elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) helping organisations embrace the latest encryption and security capabilities without compromising performance.
Once commissioned network administrators can now remotely re-key their DCAP devices, removing the need to produce, manage, distribute and install certificates in person. This allows customers to deploy units quickly and securely, reducing both operational costs and the risk of compromise in transit. The ability to remotely re-key devices, using the Self Keying feature, increases the ability to support short notice changes to a network and increases security posture by allowing re-keying to be completed quickly, as and when required, reducing the need for the Trusted Local Operator (TLO) to be trained.
With constant attacks on sensitive data, it has become increasingly critical for organisations to implement strong encryption and digital signatures to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of their critical data. Increased key lengths can greatly enhance security but also require more computational capacity that can slow down operational performance. The addition of DCAP support for ECC provides a viable alternative to traditional algorithms where performance is critical – ECC key generation performance is more than 1,000 times faster than for the equivalent security with a long RSA key. Once the key has been securely generated the use of an ECC key can also be dramatically faster. When these performance benefits are combined with the smaller key size, network, memory and storage overheads are dramatically reduced, making ECC a compelling option for systems that must remain secure for several years.
Dr Phil Jones, vice president Thales e-Security says: “As a leading supplier of encryption technology, Thales has delivered thousands of network encryption devices to the UK government as well as to customers around the world. Achieving CESG CAPS certification for our Self Keying feature demonstrates our continued commitment to achieving both nationally and internationally recognized standards and compliance requirements. We continue to release features, such as support for ECC, in a way that delivers the performance and consistent management capabilities of our network and data protection product portfolio. It is vital that our customers have a high level of confidence in the products they buy and independent review of a product’s security properties is a powerful tool in building that confidence. CAPS approval now allows our UK government customers to take full advantage of our Datacryptor product line to secure their High Assurance networks”.
CAPS (CESG Assisted Products Service) is a certification scheme exclusive to the UK Government market. CAPS offers Government and MoD users the assurance their security products have been tested to the highest standards. Datacryptor AP and Datacryptor 2000 have been certified under the CAPS scheme.
Datacryptor products have achieved certifications including Federal Information Processing Standard FIPS, Common Criteria, the UK government CAPS (CESG Assisted Products Service) standards, NATO approvals, and listing on the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency’s Unified Capabilities Approved Products List (DISA UCAPL).