This year, for the first time EEMA - the European Forum for Electronic Business - organized an Annual Award for Excellence in IT Security to reward companies which have shown the greatest effort into "pushing back the e-business frontiers, and developing groundbreaking solutions that offer practical benefit".
Launched in September 1999 as a joint venture between SWIFT and TT Club, the transport and logistics industry body, bolero.net is a global initiative to move trade onto the internet. The Bolero System provides secure electronic transmission of business data and documents along the entire trade chain from front-end order processing and management to back-end trade document exchange.
The EEMA panel says it chose bolero.net because it clearly meets the requirements of authentication, non-repudiation, data integrity, confidentiality and network independence through an open, commercial model delivered by a trusted third party. It also works across industries with an open architecture and in addition to technology it offers procedures, legal frameworks and a rulebook.
Highly secure
Utimaco Safeware provides the security infrastructure for the server and client side of the bolero.net platform with a portfolio of products to support the internet transactions of bolero.net members, including authentication, digital signatures and encryption. The Utimaco Safeware security framework is based on the use of smartcards and the standard security protocols S/MIME and SSL.
"We provide highly secure communications between banks and corporate customers and between corporate customers and their trading partners," explains Peter Scott, bolero.net¦s commercial director. "Our solution, which uses Utimaco Safeware, meets both the requirements of electronic services as well as the requirements of legal acceptance and liability of electronic transactions."
"The success of the e-business revolution will depend on security and reliability of electronic documents and transactions. Bolero.net is a pioneer in that area and has a unique chance to become a world-wide standard platform for e-business", says Norbert Pohlmann, member of the Board of Utimaco Safeware AG.