RSA Announces Support for SET Payment Standard Across Entire Product Line; World's Most Popular Encryption Solution Provider Now Supports VISA/MasterCard Standard for Secure Payments Over the Internet.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 1996--RSA Data Security, Inc., the world's leading developer of encryption technologies, today announced that it will provide solutions in support of Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), the new technical standard that will enable secure bankcard transactions over the Internet. The first of such offerings is available as a free upgrade for RSA's industry-leading BSAFE 3.0 encryption engine. The upgrade will provide all the cryptographic modules required to implement the SET specifications.

RSA also announced plans to release a more comprehensive SET-specific toolkit later this year. This toolkit, in addition to supplying developers with the necessary cryptographic technologies, will directly support all SET messaging protocols and transactions, dramatically reducing the development time needed to produce secure SET bankcard processing Web browsers and merchant servers. The new SET toolkit will conform to RSA's next-generation Layered Open Crypto Toolkit (LOCT) architecture, providing developers with a more open, extensible and flexible environment that simultaneously enhances security and ease of use.

The SET standard, developed jointly by MasterCard International, Visa International and other companies, is based on RSA's widely accepted Public Key Cryptography Standards, specifically the PKCS No. 7 secure messaging standard. PKCS was originally designed to foster interoperability among vendors using RSA technology. RSA and a consortium of influential partners, including Microsoft, Lotus, Sun, M.I.T. and others, developed the standards in 1991.

"The publishing of the new SET standard represents one of the most important milestones in the evolution of secure electronic commerce over the Internet," said Jim Bidzos, president and chief executive officer of RSA. "Now, developers can easily create new credit card payment applications for the Internet. We're pleased to be part of this industry effort"

Bidzos added that RSA provided cryptographic expertise to MasterCard and VISA developers in order to ensure that the SET specification offers the highest quality, as well as the most efficient and secure RSA cryptographic technology possible.

RSA plans to provide a SET stack to give its customers a significant lead in building SET-compliant applications for merchants and consumers. In addition, RSA also announced that it will work closely with industry partners Netscape, Microsoft, Oracle, and others to incorporate SET into popular Web browsers and Internet E-mail packages.

In addition to Visa and MasterCard, other SET participants included GTE, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape Communications Corp., SAIC, Terisa Systems, VeriSign, Inc., as well as RSA Data Security.

BSAFE

BSAFE 3.0, the company's industry-leading cryptography engine, provides software developers with multiple algorithms and modules for adding encryption and authentication features to any application. BSAFE includes modules for popular encryption techniques, such as RSA, DES, Diffie-Hellman, RC2, RC4, the high-performance RC5 algorithm, as well as a host of government algorithms.

RSA Data Security, Inc.

RSA Data Security, Inc. is the world's brand name for cryptography, with more than 25 million copies of RSA encryption and authentication technologies installed and in use worldwide. RSA technologies are part of existing and proposed standards for the Internet and World Wide Web, CCITT, ISO, ANSI, IEEE, as well as business, financial and electronic commerce networks around the globe. The company develops and markets platform-independent developers' kits and end-user products, and provides comprehensive cryptographic consulting services. Founded in 1982 by the inventors of the RSA Public Key Cryptosystem, the company is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. -0-

Note to Editors: BSAFE and Layered Open Crypto Architecture (LOCT) are trademarks of RSA Data Security, Inc. All other product and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. For information about RSA: Patrick Corman or Lisa Croel Corman/Croel Marketing & Communications [phone] or [phone], [e-mail] or [e-mail]

CONTACT: Corman/Croel Marketing & Communications

Patrick Corman, 415/326-9648

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Lisa Croel, 415/326-0487

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