CERTICOM INTRODUCES MOBILETRUST PKI EXPRESS PROGRAM AND OTHER WIRELESS SECURITY ENHANCEMENTS TO REDUCE THE COMPLEXITY AND HIGH COSTS OF PKI DEPLOYMENT

Exclusive New Features Bolster Industry's First PKI Solution to Extend e-Business Security Investments to the Wireless World 

CTIA Wireless IT 2001, San Diego, Calif., September 11, 2001 - Certicom (Nasdaq: CERT; TSE: CIC), a leading provider of mobile e-business security, today announced its new MobileTrust PKI Express Program and other exclusive new enhancements to its complete public key infrastructure (PKI) offering that further reduce the complexities and costs associated with PKI. Certicom's comprehensive PKI offering, the industry's first PKI solution to extend e-business security investments to the wireless world, includes Trustpoint PKI products and the MobileTrust certificate authority (CA), which enable the rapid deployment of e-business and wireless applications that demand the highest levels of security in key industries including healthcare, finance, telecommunications and government. 

The highlights of today's announcement include:

  • MobileTrust PKI Express program, for quick and low-cost deployment of certificates in pilot mode;
  • Additional platform support for Trustpoint PKI suite and feature enhancements to reduce the complexities and high-costs associated with PKI;
  • Trustpoint PKI Portal, which interoperates with customers existing security investments; can now issue wireless certificates to VeriSign customers
  • Launch of a world-class, secure bunker to offer the highest levels of protection available.

"Certicom is aggressively attacking the complexities and high costs that have limited PKI deployment and we are allowing companies with legacy products to bridge the gap between the wired and wireless world," said Rick Dalmazzi, President and CEO of Certicom. "Certicom's complete PKI offering includes products and services to manage the security needs of the desktop as well as handheld devices, such as Palm handhelds, RIM pagers and WAP-enabled phones. In addition, Certicom is the first company to offer affordable, user-friendly PKI that enables the practical use of breakthrough applications in areas such as banking, insurance, mortgage, e-healthcare, travel, retail and government agency services." 

Available today, Certicom is introducing the MobileTrust PKI Express Program that enables customers to deploy certificates in pilot mode with lower up front costs. MobileTrust is a trust service that allows companies to outsource some or all of their PKI security needs. Leading healthcare, enterprise, and e-commerce application developers use MobileTrust certificates to enable trusted, secure connections between wired and wireless users and to generate digitally signed transactions. With MobileTrust PKI Express, customers can begin issuing certificates in days, ultimately reducing time to market by months, in many cases. 

MobileTrust features a flexible registration model that allows businesses to dictate the level of investment in resources and infrastructure. MobileTrust's new web-based administrator console allows customers to quickly and easily manage certificates and the one-click certificate retrieval makes PKI easy for end-users. In addition, MobileTrust certificates, and Trustpoint products, are compatible with wireless applications developed with Certicom toolkits and with popular desktop applications such as MS Office XP and Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and common e-mail applications. 

"At MedQuist, we want our healthcare customers to be able to use our transcriptions services where most convenient for them, whether in the office from their desktop PC or while on-the-go from their PDAs," said Ron Scarpone, Senior Vice President, Business Development. "MobileTrust answers growing corporate and developer demands for a full range of options that will make it easier to take advantage of new emerging wireless applications in a manner that is completely secure, easy to manage and cost-effective." 

Certicom also announced enhancements to its Trustpoint product suite, which enables businesses that already have legacy PKI systems, or need to have a PKI system on-site, to seamlessly manage both wired and wireless digital certificates within one framework. Trustpoint is now supporting multiple new platforms including Windows 2000 and 32 and EPOC, and has key new features including advanced PKCS and AES algorithm support, easy configuration and publishing tools and advanced support for WAP PKI. The Trustpoint PKI Portal now interoperates with the VeriSign CA to issue wireless certificates to VeriSign customers. 

Partners can now resell the PKI Portal to its customers, representing a new sales channel for Certicom. Trustpoint is a comprehensive suite of PKI products that allows today's enterprises to build wireless certificate capabilities to enable secure communication and digital signatures via personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones and pagers. 

"As we enter the wireless age, public key technology is becoming increasingly important as a means of securing LANs," said Joe Ryan, vice president of Funk Software. "We are committed to providing the most secure authentication and access control solutions for the wireless LAN in our Steel-Belted Radius family of AAA servers. We believe that Certicom's Trustpoint products are on the cutting edge of PKI security solutions, and we are pleased to be able to incorporate them in Steel-Belted Radius." 

Recent studies reveal that online security is a major concern for today's consumer. Some industry analysts are predicting the global PKI market to increase by 42% annually, reaching 1.2Bn by 2004. PKI enables legally binding transactions to be performed in mobile and online environments. 

"Enterprises will drastically intensify spending on mobile PKI technologies to $1.5 billion by 2006, paving the way for security solutions such as Certicom's MobileTrust to address the needs of emerging m-business applications." said Rob Deane, analyst at Datamonitor. 

Unlike other PKI offerings, with MobileTrust and Trustpoint, Certicom features products and services that will help customers quickly and easily deploy advanced PKI security that extends e-business applications to the wireless world. Key benefits of Certicom's offering include low up-front costs, flexible deployment schemes based on customer needs, standards-based products, interoperability with existing security investments and a strategy that supports PKI both in wired and wireless environments. 

As part of today's announcement, Certicom will be launching a highly-secure security bunker to offer customers the highest levels of protection available. The new bunker features multiple layers of physical and electronic security including dual access biometric controls, motion detection and 24x7 surveillance. 

"Security, privacy, transaction integrity and user authentication are important to everyone conducting transactions over electronic channels," said John Mennel, Vice-President, Platform Products, 724 Solutions Inc. "As a leading wireless infrastructure provider to the financial services industry, 724 Solutions has to be able to offer a best-in-class PKI solution that is interoperable with today's leading CA vendors and is standards-compliant. Our solution, which incorporates Certicom's TrustPoint PKI Portal technology, allows us to deliver a flexible solution that meets the diverse requirements of our customers - opening the realm of possible services they can offer over wireless devices." 

Pricing and Availability
Certicom's MobileTrust CA and the Trustpoint PKI Product Suite are available for purchase. For information on pricing, please contact Certicom at 510.780.5400 or visit the Website at http://www.certicom.com

About Certicom
Certicom is a leading provider of information security software and services, specializing in solutions for mobile e-business. The company's products and services are specifically designed to address the challenges imposed by a wireless data environment. Certicom's solutions incorporate its efficient encryption technology and are based on industry standards for information security that utilize public key cryptography. Certicom's products are currently licensed to more than 200 customers including Cisco Systems, Inc., Handspring Inc., Motorola, Inc., Nortel Networks, Openwave Systems, Inc., Palm, Inc., QUALCOMM, Inc., Research In Motion Ltd., Sony International (Europe) GmbH and Verizon Communications Inc. Certicom's headquarters and worldwide sales and marketing operations are based in the Silicon Valley in Hayward. For more information, visit Certicom's Web site at http://www.certicom.com


Certicom, MobileTrust and Trustpoint are trademarks or registered trademarks of Certicom Corp. All other companies and products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. 

Except for historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to the acceptance of mobile and wireless devices and the continued growth of e-commerce and m-commerce, the increase of the demand for mutual authentication in m-commerce transactions, the acceptance of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology as an industry standard, the market acceptance of our principal products and sales of our customer's products, the impact of competitive products and technologies, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of fourth parties, and costs of product development. Certicom will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect Certicom's financial results is included in the documents Certicom files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulatory authorities. 

For further information, please contact: 

Lorraine Kauffman Carol Paterson
Corporate Communications Lois Paul & Partners (for Certicom)
Certicom Corp. (415) 262-1908
(510) 780-5417 carol_paterson@lpp.com
lkauffman@certicom.com