Certification Infrastructures for Europe

The Interworking Public Key Certification Infrastructure for Europe (ICE-TEL) project, funded by the EC, aims at implementing an Internet X.509-based certification infrastructure for industrial and academic research institutions on a pan-European level. The project's participants include the Danish Computing Center for Research and Education (Uni-C) in Copenhagen, the German National Research Institute for Informatio n Technology (GMD) in Darmstadt, and COST Computer Security Technologies in Kista, Sweden.

ICE-TEL offers certification services to end users and organizations alike. The ICE-TEL trust model combines PGP and Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) models. It includes a description of the levels of tru st that a user consigns to others. This data is stored in the user's personal security environment.

Therefore, the model supports organic growths of trust between users without the involvement of certification authorities (CAs), as well as hierarchical trust through CAs. Users can also delegate trust to the security administrator of a local or remote CA. According to Wolfgang Schneider, an ICE-TEL project manager, "the user is at the center of the trust model."

ICE-TEL is not intended for commercial transactions. But the experience gained in setting up this project might prove to be useful for commercial products, such as GMD's SECUDE CA management tools.

Baltimore Technologies in Dublin, Ireland, runs another EC-sponsored research project, known as EuroTrust. The project, which began in July 1997, intends to develop a CA infrastructure for commercial and industry organizations throughout Europe. Using EuroTrust's CA concept, companies can distribute and manage digital keys and certificates for use in secure e-mail, electronic messaging, and payment services. "EuroTrust will conform with the governmental and key-length regulations in all EU countries," says Fran Rooney, managing director of Baltimore Technologies.

Part of the EuroTrust infrastructure is Baltimore's UniCert CA system, which lets organizations and individuals offer Web-based CA services and issue X509 certificates. As a result, these organizations can authenticate their customers and business partners.