Sun Microsystems Inc’s Internet commerce group has finally launched its SKIP – Simple Key management for IP – for Solaris. SKIP for Solaris, part of the Sunscreen family of security is said to enable secure transactions over the Net without modification to existing applications, claims Sun. The software is based on is a network-layer protocol supporting multicast and unicast IPv4 and IPv6 packet protocols; automatic certificate discovery; encryption algorithm discovery and Perfect Forward Secrecy, which provides security for old network traffic, even if keys are stolen or compromised. Simple Key management for Internet Protocol changes the encryption keys every 30 seconds or 500Kb by default to minimize the amount of stuff encrypted with a single key. SKIP for Solaris is out now in three versions: a 512-bit version worldwide; 1,024-bit for financial institutions and foreign units of US corporations and 2,048-bit for use in the US. They go from $100 per single user to $10 a copy in 5,000 to 10,000 lots. SKIP for PC for Windows 3.X, 95 and NT will be out later this year.
