BEA`s industry-leading middleware gains export approval for 128-bit encryption add-on without key recovery

BEA Systems, Inc., a market leader in distributed mission-critical middleware solutions for the world`s largest enterprises, have announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce has granted export approval for a 128-bit security encryption add-on without key recovery to BEA TUXEDO. With this export approval, BEA is now able to offer international customers the scalability and reliability advantages of BEA TUXEDO, with the highest levels of security commercially available today.

Encryption is the process of algorithmically scrambling data to prevent (or hinder) unauthorized receipt of data, while still preserving access to the original data by authorized users. 128-bit encryption is generally considered "military grade" and is unlikely to be broken by brute force searching. This level of security means that if every computer on Earth were dedicated to guessing keys, for example, it would still take millions of years to search the huge number of potential keys.

BEA released a 128-bit encryption add-on for BEA TUXEDO 6.3 in 1997. Previously, strict export regulations limited BEA to selling it only in the U.S. and Canada. Recently, the U.S. Department of Commerce loosened the regulations regarding the export of strong encryption to banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, healthcare and medical records companies, on-line merchants, and U.S. subsidiaries. BEA immediately sought and has been granted approval to export this product to companies within these specified industries located in any of 46 approved countries.

"The loosening of export regulations for encryption provides an extremely important and much sought after benefit for our international customers," said Joe Menard, vice president of worldwide marketing for BEA. "Now, they can confidently deploy applications in industries such as banking, insurance, and medical claims knowing this data is secure."

BEA TUXEDO provides security for an application using authentication, authorization, and data encryption mechanisms. BEA offers 40-bit, 56-bit, and 128-bit Link Level Encryption add-on products to protect data privacy on network links. TUXEDO`s 128-bit encryption package uses the Diffie-Hellman algorithm to generate temporary session keys. All further link traffic is then encrypted by the negotiated session key, using the RC4 bulk data encryption algorithm. BEA TUXEDO also supports service-level Access Control Lists (ACLs) for events, queues, and services. All of these security features help end-users or application ISVs design and deploy a highly reliable, secure environment for distributed computing.