By Pia Heikkila, 16 May 2001 11:00
NEWS Digital signature company Verisign this week announced deals with smartcard vendors Gemplus, Schlumberger and Oberthur to develop products that allow IT departments to load Verisign's digital signature onto a single smartcard. But analysts claim Verisign has been slow to sign the deals and that the agreements should have been made a long time ago. Andrew Philips, senior analyst at Gartner-Dataquest and author of a report on the smartcard market published this week, claimed PKI companies have been playing too hard to get. "It is not a surprising move from Verisign as IT directors are fed up hearing about PKI without actually seeing any real products and services," he said. Anoop Ubhey, smart card industry analyst at Frost and Sullivan, said Verisign's announcement will hopefully be followed by increased interoperability in the highly competitive IT security industry. Ubhey told silicon.com: "IT departments see PKI as complicated and riddled with standards problems. Hopefully, the Verisign agreement sees more security companies working together to ensure interoperability and easier deployment." Verisign remained bullish about its strategy.
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