Minneapolis July 18, 2001 Datakey today announced that it has received the largest award to date for its cryptographic smart card systems, valued at nearly $3 million, from the EXOCOM Group Inc., a Canadian-based value-added reseller (VAR). Under a contract with the Canadian Department of National Defence, EXOCOM will deploy 53,000 user seats and additional Datakey smart cards to support more than 80,000 users. Shipments to EXOCOM will take place throughout the third and fourth quarters, with full delivery completed by the end of 2001.
The DND/Canadian Forces protect Canadian interests at home and abroad, help civil authorities protect and sustain national interests and assist in national emergencies. To enable a secure environment for accessing and communicating sensitive yet unclassified information over its large computer networks, the DND selected enhanced Internet security solutions from Entrust and Datakey smart card systems, which feature 32K of storage space for Entrust digital identities including extended key histories.
"Given the sensitive nature of information and data shared through DND networks, Entrust's enhanced Internet security solutions and Datakey smart card systems are frequently chosen as the best way to authorize and safeguard access to data and the enterprise network," said Gary Miller, vice president of strategy and business development, EXOCOM. "We partnered with Datakey because its smart cards deliver a proven solution for using Entrust digital IDs throughout the full range of PKI applications we are deploying for the DND. And with FIPS 140-1 validation, Datakey smart card technology provides the independently certified security required for DND operations."
EXOCOM's comprehensive Information Technology (IT) Security and Privacy solutions include expertise in deploying Entrust's enhanced Internet security and Datakey smart card systems. EXOCOM has helped many leading global organizations, including Royal Mail and Mackenzie Financial Corp., design and deploy secure and trusted information technology solutions.
"This major new business is particularly encouraging since it comes at a time when we are seeing a general slowdown of IT spending as our customers respond to the current economic climate," said Carl Boecher, Datakey's president and CEO. "Although this award was received late in our second fiscal quarter, it will not have a meaningful impact on second quarter's revenues. But it will have a very positive impact on our third- and fourth-quarter results."
