Illinois Taps Entrust for Secure E-Gov Initiatives

Entrust Technologies Inc. of Plano, Texas, announced Jan. 22 that Illinois will use the company's e-business security solutions to provide the secure infrastructure necessary for its electronic government initiatives.

Entrust Technologies' electronic security package includes public-key infrastructure technology and related software for managing the privacy and security of online transactions.

Under the arrangement, a digital identification will be issued to every citizen and business that want to conduct electronic transactions with the state of Illinois, said company officials.

PKI is a system of digital certificates or similar mechanisms that verify and authenticate the validity of each party involved in an Internet transaction. The technology will be used for citizen and business transactions across all state departments, said company and state officials.

Over the next 18 months, the state hopes to distribute more than a million digital identifications to citizen and businesses that will enable them to conduct their business online with the state government.

The digital identifications will be used to process taxes, secure communication among health officials and allow various online registrations and filings.

Entrust Technologies has about 550 employees and posted sales of $148 million in 2000.