BCE Emergis Forms Alliance with Validation Authority Leader ValiCert.

Business Editors

MONTREAL & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2000

Joins ValiCert Affiliate Program to Provide Validation

Authority Services

BCE Emergis (TSE:IFM) announced today that it has signed a strategic alliance with California-based ValiCert, a leading provider of end-to-end secure infrastructure solutions for e-Transactions. Based on the agreement, BCE Emergis has become a member of the ValiCert Affiliate Program and will now be able to provide its customers with validation authority (VA) services, thus further enhancing its already significant security services offering and extending the trust and security in business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

VA services enable customers to identify potentially unsecure parties in an electronic transaction by instantly verifying the validity of digital credentials, including digital certificates issued by any certificate authority (CA), within any application, using any protocol, from anywhere in the world.

BCE Emergis' VA services support multiple PKI protocols, including the Online Certificate Status Checking Protocol, CRL distribution, and certificate revocation trees. Through its partnership with ValiCert, BCE Emergis now offers an online digital certificate validation service that supports multi-vendor security certificates, including those from Entrust, IBM, VeriSign/Thawte and Baltimore/CyberTrust.

"Considering the high growth of e-commerce and the need for strong security services, we are committed to broadening our portfolio, building on our existing PKI Hosting & Management Services offering and integrating new technologies such as certificate validation", said Rene Poirier, Senior Vice President, Development, Marketing and Integration, BCE Emergis. "Security and trust are the main drivers of e-commerce and BCE Emergis intends to position itself as a premier provider in this field."

"We are excited to welcome industry leader BCE Emergis to our Affiliate Program as they will play a key role in our expansion into the Canadian market," said Sathvik Krishnamurthy, vice-president of marketing and business development for ValiCert. "BCE Emergis is a leading Canadian company - as a result, users can now buy services that are from - and based in - Canada."

BCE Emergis already designs and operates PKI Hosting and Management Services on behalf of client organizations and provides them with the infrastructure needed to become their own CA - with their own certification policies. Customers benefit from BCE Emergis' expertise, fast turn-around time, scalability, cross-certification capabilities and economies of scale while maintaining total control over their security policies. BCE Emergis VA Services represent the next step in providing end-to-end solutions to certificate issuers and users.

BCE Emergis broad portfolio of security solutions also includes the BCE Emergis Electronic Business Network (BEBN), a highly secure business network that allows businesses to conduct worry-free e-commerce over the Internet. BEBN is an end-to-end solution designed to reduce the complexity and cost of creating and managing a secure, proprietary network. It is a virtually private TCP/IP-based solution designed to support business-to-business e-commerce in a highly secure environment.

ValiCert is a leading provider of secure e-Transaction infrastructure solutions for e-commerce and other business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications. ValiCert's validation, transaction and proof products and services are designed to work with any certificate authority and e-payment solution to provide protection before, during and after e-Transactions. ValiCert's innovative All-Sourcing(TM) approach delivers its products and services through enterprise software, through an outsourced ASP service, and through an offering for service providers.

ValiCert was one of the first companies to develop a commercially-available Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) validation service and continues to lead a variety of Internet standards efforts. The company is one of the chief authors of the OCSP and the Simple Certificate Validation Protocol (SCVP), and contributed to the XML Data Type Definition (DTD) for digital receipts as a founding member of the Digital Receipt Alliance. ValiCert is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide, and can be reached on the Internet at www.valicert.com.

BCE Emergis delivers network-centric e-commerce services that significantly improve customer processes through secure B2B exchanges. Combining e-commerce, e-payment and security services, BCE Emergis offers clients in the healthcare, financial services, telecommunications and transportation industries a full suite of core and vertical-specific services that are the essential building blocks and infrastructure required for e-commerce. BCE Emergis is one of the top e-commerce providers in North America and its shares are included in the TSE 100 Composite Index. For more information, please refer to www.emergis.com.

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of BCE Emergis with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly.