Baltimore secures Northern Ireland Health Service.

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 27, 1999--

HPSS chooses Baltimore's UniCERT technology to establish an infrastructure for secure electronic communications within the medical community

Baltimore, the operating name of Zergo Holdings plc (London: ZGO), a global leader in e-commerce and enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) solutions, today announced that the Health and Personal Social Services (HPSS) in Northern Ireland, part of the UK National Health Service, has chosen its award winning security technology to implement a trusted infrastructure for secure electronic communications between hospitals and family doctors.

Using Baltimore UniCERT Certificate Authority system in conjunction with Baltimore MailSecure, the HPSS will establish a completely secure and authenticated means to distribute patient records and other confidential data across open networks. The benefits of the Internet, in particular email, in the fields of medicine and healthcare are becoming increasingly apparent. Effective Internet usage could significantly change existing healthcare information systems, making them faster, more efficient and secure.

"We have chosen Baltimore's security technology in order to ensure secure transmission of highly sensitive data via what are largely insecure networks," commented Derek Cowan, IS Security Officer at HPSS. "We believe that only with effective key management and authentication software can encryption be fully deployed in an environment as complex as the HPSS. This is vital to the HPSS being able to reap the benefits of electronic communication in order to treat patients and clients more effectively."

The HPSS will use UniCERT to issue digital certificates to family doctors, hospitals and the wider medical community, inorder for them to securely access records and files travelling over the networks. These digital certificates will act as "Digital IDs" or "Digital Passports" meaning that only those who can authenticate their identities over the Internet using these certificates, will be able to access information.

MailSecure will enable confidential data to be sent via email with the assurance that the data cannot be read or altered by an unauthorised person. This system is not only cost-effective and simple to use, but provides accountability since the email can be digitally signed by the originator.

"The Internet provides the healthcare sector with a cost effective, efficient means of communications, but providing security for a broad range of systems has proven difficult," commented Aidan Gallagher, Vice President Sales at Baltimore. "We are delighted that the HPSS has chosen Baltimore's open, standards based technology as the framework for their security infrastructure to ensure the integrity and privacy of confidential medical data."

About Baltimore

Baltimore develops and markets security products and services for a wide range of e-commerce and enterprise applications. Its products include Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) systems, cryptographic toolkits, security applications and hardware cryptographic devices.

Baltimore UniCERT is a modular, scalable, multipurpose Certificate Authority (CA) which issues and manages digital certificates for a wide range of applications including email, browsers and virtual private networks. Baltimore PKI-Plus is a developer toolkit to PKI-enable legacy and new applications by providing support for a wide range of cryptographic, directory, smartcard and CA systems. Baltimore's PKI products are available directly and via global Trusted World partners. All products are supported by professional services comprising of system integration and consulting.

Baltimore was formed by the merger in January 1999 of Zergo Holdings plc and Baltimore Technologies Ltd. It has customers in over forty countries world-wide including some of the world's leading financial, e-commerce, telecommunications companies and government agencies.

Baltimore is the operating name of Zergo Holdings plc, a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (ZGO). Intel Corporation is a minority shareholder in the company. Baltimore operates from 10 cities world-wide with main offices in London, Dublin, Plano (Texas) and Sydney.

Baltimore made e-commerce history in 1998 when President Clinton and Ireland's Prime Minister Ahern digitally signed an inter-governmental communique using security technology provided by Baltimore.

For further information and press releases on Baltimore, please visit http://www.baltimore.com