Encryption mandate puts strain on financial IT

Lucas Mearian and Patrick Thibodeau report in this week's ComputerWorld on the costs the financial industry is going to have to bear as a result of mandates to upgrade the existing encryption infrastructure to triple-DES compliance.

Led by Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard, the major electronic funds companies began seeking an industry conversion to Triple DES several years ago. But with the deadlines looming, banks and retailers are only beginning to deal with the costly conversion, and they're now calling for deadline extensions. Many of the nation's 360,000 ATMs will have to be replaced to comply, as will some back-end systems. Many applications will have to be rewritten to handle Triple DES.

A Bay Area-based company, iS3, is addressing this market opportunity head on with their Secure OMS product suite designed to assist financial institutions in managing the complex environment of key distribution/update in a 3DES world. They also recently announced a strategic partnership relationship with Visa International.