Cylink CEO Dr. Jim Omura Gives Real Examples of How Outdated Government Policies Cripple U.S. Companies and Give Away Competitive Advantages.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 1, 1996--At the SAFE Forum (Security and Freedom through Encryption), held today at Stanford University, Dr. Jim Omura, CEO of Cylink Corporation, presented compelling information for the need to reduce governmental restrictions on export of encryption technology.

As a panelist in the session, "How U.S. Encryption Policy Fails to Meet User Needs," Dr. Omura said "Current export policy not only hampers business efforts but causes confusion, delays and bureaucratic red tape. Foreign competitors gain free access to markets where the U.S. would normally be the leader." Dr. Omura feels that "U.S. business is crippled by outdated export restrictions that are reducing the income of companies like Cylink by at least 50%." Cylink has been the leader in information security for over 12 years and has had more experience in this area than others.

To assist the over 400 people who attended the event, as well as Senator Burns (R-MT), author of the ProCODE bill (S1726), representatives Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), as well as the other speakers and panelists with a better understanding of encryption, Chuck Williams, chief scientist for Cylink, provided an entertaining demonstration of the simplicity and value of public key encryption.

Spoofing the Clinton administration's recent "Filegate" snafu, Williams demonstrated how easy it is for private citizens, as well as the government, to snoop unprotected private passwords or correspondence and find, in this case, Cylink CEO Jim Omura's mock FBI file.

After successfully encrypting Omura's file and presenting the secured message as a series of nonsensical numbers and letters, Williams pointed out that "someone snooping would find absolutely no value in this information." That simple demonstration represented the essence of the ProCODE bill deems to protect -- the privacy rights of the individual against prying eyes of unwelcome snoops, be it government, criminal or personal.

A common theme amongst the distinguished panelists was the recognition that limitations of current law and the lethargy by which changes come results from representatives' unfamiliarity with technology. Senator Burns said, "I am not a technocrat and many of my colleagues are not familiar with technology, but many of them are beginning to listen and now that this dialogue has begun the chance to move legislation forward is very good."

Regarding the value of the day's events, panelists and congressional representatives alike agreed that all were preaching to the choir. But as representative Eshoo pointed out, "Legislators may not be fully informed. Much educational work needs to be done to plant those seeds that will lead to policy change. The three key words are education, education, education."

Cylink Corporation (NASDAQ: CYLK), a sponsor of the SAFE Forum, is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The world's leading provider of enterprise-wide information security and wireless communications products, Cylink enables secure data transmissions over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), public packet switched networks (such as the INTERNET) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay networks.

Cylink customers include Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions and multinational firms. For more information about Cylink and its family of hardware, software and network security products, visit the company's Web site at http://www.cylink.com.

CONTACT: Cylink

Paula Contos Dunne, 408/523-5993

Pager, 408/229-7721

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