Baltimore chief urges greater co-operation in e-business growth

The computer security industry, governments, patent and regulatory bodies and consumers have moral and social obligations to work together and tackle the issues that are preventing a streamlined environment for electronic commerce, according to Mr Fran Rooney, chief executive of Baltimore Technologies.

Speaking here during his keynote at Baltimore Technology's second annual conference, Mr Rooney said Baltimore wanted "to bring stability, to bring calm" by providing leadership in the security software sector. But he noted that disputes and a lack of co-ordination on standards for software and hardware were "pulling (the e-commerce industry) down".

"Because these issues are not being addressed and because the industry overall is leaving these gaps, people are confused," he said. He also said the "device revolution" - the proliferation of Internet access devices such as WAP phones, handheld organisers and, eventually, digital television - "is probably the biggest restraint on us going forward".

The US and the rest of the world are already diverging in the technologies underlying mobile phones, which will cause difficulties for using mobiles for so-called m-commerce, or e-commerce transactions over mobiles, he said. US phones do not use SIM cards, the small microchip-embedded cards carried in European mobiles that identify the user, personalise the phone and activate the user's account.

SIM cards could be used to store digital certificates, which act as tiny electronic passports to confirm the identity of a user during a transaction. But US phones have no such capability. And mobile phone manufacturers have been reluctant to design phones that could carry an extra SIM card for storing certificates, said Mr Rooney.

He also noted the "chaos" that can ensue when governments make quick decisions to regulate technologies. While he praised the American and other national governments for implementing laws to recognise digital signatures, Mr Rooney said that the US government's early decision to restrict the use of encryption - the encoding methods needed to create the signatures - inhibited the growth of e-commerce. The result was a bitter dispute that continues between the software industry and the government. "People got entrenched before they considered what the issues were," he said.

Telecommunications companies, because they are the pipeline for the Internet connectivity that enables e-commerce, have "a huge moral and social obligation to really look at their power going forward," he said. "They've also got to invest in the future and make sure bandwidth is made available" to both businesses and the home.

Mr Rooney encouraged standards bodies to pave the way for making systems and devices inter-operable. However, he expressed particular concern that authorities that issue patents make well-informed decisions on whether to issue patents on technologies. "I think patent bodies need to be a lot more careful," he said. "No one should be able to put any restrictions on people being innovative." He said he recognised the rights of people to patent original inventions and receive licensing fees for their use by others. But Mr Rooney said that companies should not be allowed to charge excessive fees and place geographical restrictions on the use of the technology.

Several other issues dominated discussion sessions and keynotes during the two-and-a-half day conference. One emerging trend is the increased interest in smart cards - cards embedded with microchips that can store a range of information - as part of security systems. While the cards are widely used for a variety of purposes in Europe they have remained more of a curiosity in the States, and computer manufacturers have until now shown little interest in incorporating smart card readers into home and business PCs, for example.

But major manufacturers such as Dell are now making readers standard in many keyboards and laptops. In addition, industry sources credit Microsoft's growing interest in developing applications that use the cards with focusing American attention on their potential uses.

Mobile commerce and the challenge of developing adequate security for small devices were discussed in several keynote speeches by industry figures, as well as in a range of discussion sessions. Outsourcing digital security was also identified as an emerging trend, as companies decide not to undertake the management of complex security systems in-house.

Finally, a panel of industry experts agreed that the debate over online privacy would soon overlap more vigorously with the security industry, since security systems either use highly personal data for identifying users or will presumably carry sensitive personal information between individuals and companies.

klillington@irish-times.ie