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To: quartersawyer who wrote (154)	2/11/2000 8:51:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 343

Re: Cool dated article from Red Herring re RSAS, Certicom, et al CRYPTOGRAPHERS CAN'T KEEP SECRETS redherring.com By Owen Thomas, Editor - Redherring.com - January 18, 1999 SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- Make no mistake: The RSA Data Security Conference that opened Sunday in San Jose is more about sharing secrets than keeping them. The venerable cryptography conference still offers programmers and sysadmins the promise of learning something about the systems that protect your data. But as the halls fill up with sales and marketing execs -- some of whom apparently need tutorials like Sunday's "Crypto 101" -- it becomes harder to know who's got the goods, and who's just offering spin. We managed to track down a few hard-core techies, though -- and here's what they had to say. CAPITAL IDEA Certicom chief technical officer Christopher Allen has a plan to boost adoption of his company's cutting-edge encryption technology: a venture capital fund. Certicom's elliptic-curve technology encrypts quickly, but verifies slowly -- the mirror image of the mainstream RSA algorithm's performance. That means that Certicom's technology may find acceptance in niches RSA is less able to fill -- for example, handheld computers like 3Com's PalmPilot. Mr. Allen's concern is that there won't be enough companies developing security applications with Certicom's tools to create critical mass. So he plans to raise $5 million to $10 million for distribution to elliptic-curve application developers; he hopes to attract professionals like Gifford Pinchot, a consultant and author of Intrapreneuring, to run the fund. THE PRICE OF VICTORY Sameer Parekh, who stepped down last year as CEO of the company he founded, C2Net, says his new interest is telling stories. "I think I'm pretty good at it," he adds. Mr. Parekh's latest tale, "How the Cypherpunks Defeated U.S. Encryption Restrictions Over Brunch," won over a crowd of cryptographers and activists on Friday. It wasn't an entirely happy tale -- it involved the loss of two key employees to RSA Data Security, and the layoff of half C2Net's U.S. staff partly in consequence. But, says Mr. Parekh, the result was worth it: Eric Young and Tim Hudson went on to join RSA Data Security, and as a result of their efforts, RSA got hold of encryption routines developed abroad that could be distributed worldwide. That end run around U.S. encryption export restrictions was the important thing, says Mr. Parekh; it's less important which company accomplished that goal. THE HOST WITH THE MOST RSA Data Security president Jim Bidzos clearly loves to play the host. He also manages to get involved in the hottest new security startups, often before they show up on anyone else's radar. He recently joined the board of nCipher, a security hardware company based in Cambridge, U.K., and made a pretty penny from the sale of Securify, security expert Taher Elgamal's recently formed consultancy, to Kroll-O'Gara. "I'm not in it for the money," says Mr. Bidzos. But he noted that Securify's sale made a 12-fold return for its investors, himself included. Mr. Bidzos is also staying busy as chairman of Verisign (VRSN), which recently filed for a secondary stock offering of 2.76 million shares. Seems like there was some confusion about just how much of Verisign Mr. Bidzos owns -- the documents list him as owning 3.8 million shares, but in fact, that figure includes shares owned by Security Dynamics (SDTI). He'll personally sell off only 20,000 shares in total -- not that the $1.2 million-plus those are worth today is pocket change. Sure, he's not in it for the money -- he's already got plenty. NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS Entrust (ENTU) CEO John Ryan was remarkably affable, even as he loitered outside a party being thrown by Baltimore Technologies, a newly formed contestant in the public-key infrastructure races. Fresh from relating his company's earnings to Wall Street, Mr. Ryan didn't seem keen on delivering any big surprises. "We'll announce tomorrow that we interoperate with Lucent," he said, throwing a news-hungry reporter a bone at last. Well, that's something -- but hardly an epic story. If there's any theme to this year's RSA, it's that cryptography has become a fairly boring -- if important -- business. C2Net's Mr. Parekh reminds us, however, that even as there's money to be made, there are still battles to fight and stories to be told. <eom> - Eric -