CAcert.org is a community driven, Certificate Authority that issues certificates to the public at large for free. CAcert's goal is to promote awareness and education on computer security through the use of encryption, specifically with the X.509 family of standards. We have compiled a document base that has helpful hints and tips on setting up encryption with common software, and general information about Public Key Infrastructures (PKI). For the enthusiast looking to dip their toe in the water, we have an easy way of obtaining certificates you can use with your email program. You can use these not only to encrypt, but to prove to your friends and family that your email really does come from you. For administrators looking to protect the services they offer, we provide host and wild card certificates which you can issue almost immediately. Not only can you use these to protect websites, but also POP3, SMTP and IMAP connections, to list but a few. Unlike other certificate authorities, we don't limit the strength of the certificates, or the use of wild card certificates. Everyone should have the right to security and to protect their privacy, not just those looking to run ecommerce sites. If you're extremely serious about encryption, you can join CAcert's Assurance Programme and Web of Trust. This allows you to have your identity verified to obtain added benefits, including longer length certificates and the ability to include your name on email certificates. CAcert Inc. is a non-profit association, incorporated in New South Wales Australia.

Financial Cryptography

Q: What is myNetWatchman? A: myNetWatchman collects, analyzes and reports malicious access attempts to ISPs, who can then take action against the offending machines. [Back to top] Q: How does it work? A: A small client-side application runs as a background application on your system; reading your firewall logs, and creating near-real-time reports that are relayed to the myNetwatchman servers for analysis. [Back to top]

The SwitchWare Project Active Network Research at Penn and Bellcore Active networks explore the idea of allowing routing elements to be extensively programmed by the packets passing through them. This allows computation previously possible only at endpoints to be carried out within the network itself, thus enabling optimizations and extensions of current protocols as well as the development of fundamentally new protocols. Welcome to the SwitchWare home page, describing the Active Networks research effort underway in the Penn Department of Computer and Information Science and Bellcore as well as pointers to related material.

Through DRM technologies, consumers engaging in electronic commerce could grant vendors and suppliers a license to access and utilize certain aspects of the consumers’ data. This would enable a consumer to grant a read/write license to some creditors, perhaps as a function of a mortgage agreement, and provide a read-only license to a limited subset of the data for simple transactions such as shipping agreements and online orders. Such a license would empower consumers to prevent entities from misusing or reselling consumer information.

Stamp says that business units must accept responsibility for the security of the data they generate and control to head off data leaks. "IT people are data custodians, not owners," Stamp says. "We need to transfer responsibility to business people