A new form of security

Ongoing privacy concerns and the desire to conduct legal business over the World Wide Web has many agencies clamoring for the integration of electronic forms and public-key infrastructure, a technology that encrypts data during transmission and assures the authenticity of a user's identity.

Although PKI technology is already mature and available (UWI.com's InternetForms product, for example, is already integrated with PKI), a patent held by RSA Security Inc. on encryption technologies has made its use expensive, and for most organizations, the cost is prohibitive.

Expect all that to change in September, when RSA's patent expires. "The next day, everybody will be out with a product," predicted Potluri Rao, president of Raosoft Inc., which plans to launch a PKI-enabled version of its own InterForm product at that time.