IBM has announced it will offer New Zealand’s first hosted Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Service, enabling New Zealand organisations to quickly and cost effectively deploy a PKI solution with the confidence that the highest levels ofsecurity can be met. IBM’s new PKI Vault Service will be available from 1 January 2011.

PKI is a fast growing requirement for secure business transactions globally. A large number of New Zealand organisations have a PKI requirement, often driven by the need for digital privacy certificates when adopting new devices or software, or when moving to an online business transaction model.

Despite the business advantages PKI delivers, implementation is often cost prohibitive, especially for smaller organisations. IBM’s new PKI Vault Service provides a platform to manage a client’s PKI-Certificate Authority root keys and signing keys that includes connectivity, hosting, equipment and management services for a small monthly service fee.

IBM will house the PKI infrastructure, known as a Hardware Security Module (HSM) within the new high resiliency IBM Data Centre when in opens next year. The new data centre incorporates the best of IBM’s extensive ‘green data centre’ technologies. This will provide PKI Vault customers with the additional benefits of a sustainable, secure and available hosting environment.

Greg Farmer, Global Technology Services Executive, IBM New Zealand said the new PKI Vault Service is indicative of IBM’s commitment to providing the New Zealand market with a range of relevant, quality services via the new IBM Data Centre.

“The widespread deployment of PKI in New Zealand has been hindered by the cost and infrastructure requirements that businesses are burdened with. The new IBM PKI Vault Service we are introducing will reduce the cost, risk and need for additional infrastructure while offering organisations the security solutions they need to support their business requirements.”

Customers will be provided with access to IBM’s PKI Vault infrastructure via VPN connection over the Internet or private network connection (WAN.)