13-06-2009, 07:03 PM
This innovative technology can produce smaller, faster and efficient cryptographic keys using the break through technique of elliptic curve equation rather than employing the traditional method of producing the key as the product of very large prime numbers. Although ECC can be used in collaboration with other public key encryption methods like the RSA, and Diffie-Hellman, it gains upper hand over the other encryption methods in the level of security it offers. A 164-bit ECC key can provide with an equivalent amount of security that a 1024-bit RSA key can give.
Apart from the smaller key size, which leads to faster processing along with the higher level of security, ECC consumes only less power, as well as saves on the memory and the bandwidth, that has today made ECC an attractive public-key cryptosystem for mobile/wireless environments. Developed by Certicom, a mobile e-business security provider and licensed by Hifn, a manufacturer of integrated circuitry and network security products today many manufacturers, including 3COM, Cylink, Motorola, Pitney Bowes, Siemens, TRW and VeriFone have today incorporated support for ECC in their products, welcoming the new era in public key encryption technique.
