CoreStreet Releases First Appliance for Validating Digital Signatures.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 2004

Provides Convenient, Reliable, Easy-to-Use Physical and Digital Security for Customers with Multiple Locations

CoreStreet, a leading provider of validation solutions for identity management and access control, today launched the Responder Appliance 1400, the industry's first Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) hardware solution for validating digital certificates. The Responder Appliance 1400 was developed in response to customer requests for a reliable, easy-to-use OCSP responder. It is the first and only solution that is easy to install with little to no IT support, providing scalable and cost-effective physical and digital security at organizations with multiple locations.

A robust, single-purpose device, the Responder Appliance 1400 supports tens of thousands of users and handles certificate status requests with at least 20 times the performance of traditional responders. The addition of the Responder Appliance 1400 to the CoreStreet product line provides customers with even more options for validation deployment. Now organizations can choose to deploy any combination of managed servers on software responders or responder appliances depending on their network needs.

"As the Internet moves from a session-oriented framework to transactions everywhere it is crucial for security to keep up with the changing requirements--in particular, real-time authorization and validation. That calls for a much larger number of transaction operations and drives the need for a solution that is flexible and scalable," said Pete Lindstrom, research director of Spire Security. "The appliance form factor is a favorite of security professionals looking to reduce total cost of ownership during deployment and ongoing management."

"All of CoreStreet's products are leaps and bounds ahead of the traditional security systems on the market because they enable organizations to view security in a more active manner, making transactions faster and more effective," said Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet. "The Responder Appliance continues this trend, providing a big step forward in convenience, reliability and ease-of-use for digital certificate systems. Our customers were looking for a way to provide validation in multiple environments with little to no IT staff. The Responder Appliance achieves this in a virtually maintenance-free package that is transparent to the end user."

The Responder Appliance 1400 works as part of the CoreStreet Real Time Credential Validation Authority (RTC VA). The CoreStreet RTC VA manages all PKI deployments, whether they are physical, such as smart cards, or logical, like secure email in a distributed setting. Unlike traditional OCSP responders, which require a permanent, secure connection to validate certificates, the Responder Appliance 1400 can be deployed on low-cost servers at the edge of a network, enabling validation of certificates quickly and easily without establishing an expensive secure connection back to a central vault. That's because CoreStreet uses Real Time Credentials--digitally signed proofs--embedded with information for validating and authorizing certain activities and access permissions.

Features and Functionality

Performance--A pre-defined hardware/operating system database package, the Responder Appliance 1400 has been customized to support up to 1400 responses per second out of a single appliance. Multiple appliances can be deployed to a location for additional capacity or redundancy.

Security--The Responder Appliance provides a system that has been hardened against external hacking threats and known operating system vulnerabilities. Since it's a dedicated hardware appliance, the Responder Appliance 1400 is immune to many of the vulnerabilities present in general-purpose servers.

Total Cost of Ownership--The Responder Appliance 1400 eliminates drain on IT resources by providing an easy to install OCSP responder solution that needs little IT support and fits on a standard rack mount. Customer support is available 24x7.

Certified--The Responder Appliance 1400 is designed to work with CoreStreet's Real Time Credential Validation Authority (RTC VA), a system that is Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certified and is being tested by National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) at Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 3.

Availability

The Responder Appliance 1400 is available now and can be pre-configured for a customer's network. The product works with any OCSP validation client, comes with a three-year warranty, is hot swappable and dynamically upgradeable. 24x7 customer support is available.

About CoreStreet

CoreStreet is the only provider of massively scalable validation products for identity management and access control. With CoreStreet's Real Time Credentials(TM), organizations can control physical and logical access to buildings, computer networks, applications and devices. Real Time Credentials solutions can be deployed anywhere in the world - in connected and disconnected environments - without having to set up costly and vulnerable infrastructure. CoreStreet's products are designed to secure large, mission-critical applications for military, civilian government, financial services and healthcare customers. The company, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., holds 14 patents with more pending. For more information, visit www.CoreStreet.com.