Cygnus and Cylink Announce Partnership Agreement; Agreement Enables Software Developers to Deploy Strong Public Key Cryptography Royalty-Free.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 1996--Cygnus Solutions and Cylink Corporation announced today an agreement through which Cygnus will be Cylink's primary provider of a software developer's kit (SDK) that allows developers to integrate Cylink's public key cryptography into applications, and redistribute those applications royalty-free to end-user customers.

This agreement allows Cygnus to add public key cryptography to its existing family of network security technologies. The Cygnus KerbNet product line already makes available industry standard user authentication solutions based on Kerberos technology to developers, integrators and end users. The addition of public key gives developers access to standards-based digital signature and secure communications services which have become the enabling technologies behind electronic commerce over the Internet.

"Our unique partnership with Cygnus makes Cylink's public key technology available to the broad base of software developers," said Peter Bolton, business development manager, Cylink. "We selected Cygnus to build and distribute the toolkit because of its excellent reputation for commercializing and supporting innovative software technologies. We also believe Cygnus is the best company to satisfy our customers' need for cross-platform support."

Public key cryptography provides the means for protected electronic communications between parties by using two, mathematically-related keys -- one which remains secret and the other which is made available to the public. The use of these keys to encrypt data, digitally sign communications, and prove identity through digital certificates can be performed transparently to the user within the application, providing for safe, protected communications with minimal intrusion. For this reason, public key cryptography is universally accepted as the underlying security mechanism for conducting electronic commerce over the Internet.

"Cygnus customers will benefit by gaining the ability to incorporate Cylink's excellent security technology into their applications quickly, easily, and without paying licensing fees," said Rolf Brauchler, vice president of marketing, Cygnus. "This partnership augments our KerbNet product line, and allows users to integrate strong public key capabilities for applications such as on-line banking services, EDI and secure Internet remote access."

About Cylink

Cylink Corporation (NASDAQ:CYLK) is a recognized world leader in public key cryptography, holding exclusive rights to the fundamental public key patents. The networking industry has adopted Cylink's Diffie-Hellman automated key management technique as the de facto standard. Diffie-Hellman is part of the existing and proposed business and financial security standards of ANSI, IEEE, ITU-T, ISO, IETF (including Cisco's ISAKMP and Sun's SKIP reference implementations for the IETF), as well as applications for the World Wide Web and electronic commerce. Cylink's products enable secure data transmissions over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), public packet switched networks such as the Internet, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and frame relay networks. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information on Cylink, visit the Web site at http://www.cylink.com.

About Cygnus Solutions

In 1989, Cygnus Solutions began modernizing the software development marketplace by Taming the Internet and delivering Internet technologies with commercial support as an alternative to proprietary, single vendor solutions. Today, Cygnus helps its customers create and deliver solutions faster by developing, delivering, and supporting robust development tools and software components for the embedded and native software markets.

Cygnus Solutions is a global company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and additional offices in the United Kingdom and Japan. For more information on Cygnus, visit the web site at http://www.cygnus.com.

CONTACT: Cygnus Solutions

Jeacline Marinkovic, 415/903-1442

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or

Cylink Corporation

Paula Dunne, 408/523-5993

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or

Golin/Harris Technologies

Dawn Harris, 415/904-7000 x212

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