Baltimore Technologies' recent bumpy ride on the US and London stock exchanges eased yesterday following the announcement it had been selected as a supplier of encryption technology to the US-based Identrus network of international banks providing Internet services.
The share price rose nearly 6 per cent on the London stock exchange to close at £58.75 sterling (€100.58).
Baltimore worked with Identrus in the pilot phase of the project last year. Its certificate management services will now form the initial security backbone of the Identrus global business-to-business trust network as it begins to go live.
It is understood that Baltimore faced heavy competition from major US encryption security vendors, Entrust and Verisign, to win the contract.
Baltimore has also announced that Japan Certification Services - jointly owned by Hitachi, Fujitsu and NEC - has adopted one of Baltimore's certification systems for deployment in the fast growing Japanese e-business market.
According to Mr Paddy Holahan, Baltimore's executive vice-president of marketing, the Identrus decision will give the firm a strong advantage in selling public key infrastructure systems to the network's 21 member banks.
Identrus members include Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Chase Manhattan and Bank of Japan. The network, which aims to provide a secure global framework for Internet-based business, spans 133 countries and potentially represents 10 million businesses.
Mr Holahan declined to put an estimate on the value of the Identrus deal but said individual installations of its systems could cost $100,000 to $1 million per bank.
