February 16, 2001, 11:07 AM —
Sentry 4.0
BUSINESS CASE
Sentry 4.0 provides increased trust and strong authentication for Internet transactions, enabling greater use of the Internet for critical communications.
TECHNOLOGY CASE
Sentry's platform-independent administration, "Xcertified" program, and Xcert Development Kit make PKI easier to deploy in any organization.
PROS
+ Platform-independent
+ Easy to administer
CONS
- No server support for Linux
COST
$15,000 for starter kit
PLATFORMS
Windows NT and Solaris
Xcert International Inc., Walnut Creek, Calif.; (925) 274-9300; www.xcert.com
THE MAJOR HURDLE in e-business today is establishing trust. In the past, you worked with specific people at another company: members of the sales team, technical support, customer service representatives, and so on. Today many of these functions are performed via the Internet with no person-to-person interaction. How do you ensure the parties are who they say they are?
The accepted technology standard for identifying people is PKI (public key infrastructure). But PKI solutions are often expensive, complex systems that are difficult to deploy, administer, and use. I'm happy to say that I have reviewed a product that greatly reduces the complexity in implementing PKI. Xcert International Sentry 4.0 gives you the opportunity to rapidly deploy large, usable PKI solutions that work easily in multivendor environments. I give this product an Excellent rating (for more on the topic of PKI interoperability, see related article).
Four parts to Sentry
