Organization
State of North Dakota

Industry
State government

Challenge
To facilitate secure access for state employees to access computerized information throughout North Dakota's government in a controlled and secure environment.

Solution
Entrust Technologies Inc.
Entrust/Direct
Entrust/Express

• Authentication of Web-based transactions accessing confidential information
• Secure internal e-mail system for state employees
• Secure environment for mainframe access

Over the past few years, the federal and state governments in the United States have been looking for ways to make the Internet a safer and more secure electronic hub for the exchange of information.

In the process, lawmakers in Washington, D.C. have established frameworks and guidelines facilitating Web-based electronic commerce as well as the sharing of personal information that respect privacy and confidentiality. In North Dakota, legislation empowered the Information Technology Department to "address the deployment of encryption and the administration of digital signatures."

Both results are of key importance to the State of North Dakota, which established a digital encryption committee composed of telecommunications, security and computer systems specialists with the goal of creating a secure environment in which employees could exchange electronic information.

Initially, the committee was looking for a Web-authentication solution, until continued encryption research exposed the group to Entrust Technologies, says Dean Glatt, associate director of the North Dakota Information Technology Department.

"We found that Entrust's suite of products addressed various needs - not only our encryption requirements but our need to have a public-key infrastructure that our security personnel can control."

The State of North Dakota has chosen to deploy Entrust software solutions to create a secure environment for state employees to access data.

Mr. Glatt says that Entrust's solution will allow the state government to build on future requirements, such as VPNs, TN3270 and TN5250 encryption to ensure the continued protection of data.

"We selected Entrust/PKI based on the strength of its ability to support centrally managed keys," he adds. "When investigating the marketplace, we found Entrust Technologies was the only vendor able to provide us with the right technology in a configuration we needed."

The State of North Dakota is using Entrust's advanced model for Web security, Entrust/Direct™, for trusted authentication of applications.

Entrust/Direct replaces existing security functions in Web-based applications with the scalable enterprise security of Entrust/PKI, allowing for a further level of integration with Entrust's flagship software.

The state will also use Entrust/Express™ for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook for trusted internal e-mail communications.

Mr. Glatt says that it is possible that the Entrust suite of products can provide data integrity for all areas of data on his department's networks.

"The beauty of the system is its invisible deployment for the end users," he explains.

This centralized, cost-effective and secure electronic environment for data access began with a pilot in June and North Dakota's Information Technology Department expects to have hundreds of employees use the system for Web and e-mail authentication and encryption.

"Employees who have used it so far don't even know that authentication, encryption and messaging integrity is occurring. Furthermore, they don't need to have technical expertise to use encryption and key management. It happens automatically and transparently," Mr. Glatt explains.

"Users should know data is being used and processed in a secure, confidential and private way. The security standards that we are developing will maintain the highest security of all electronic information."