Litronic to secure DOD e-mail

The Defense Department Tuesday awarded a $500,000 contract to Litronic Inc.

to provide high-security software for the department's secure e-mail system.

Under the contract, the more than 300,000 DOD employees using the department's

Defense Messaging System (DMS) can download Litronic's Fortezza digital

signature and encryption package to run on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95,

98, NT and 2000 systems.

The National Security Agency originally developed the Fortezza standards

to provide an extra level of security not available through standard products.

The Fortezza-secured digital signatures from Litronic will work with the

DOD public-key infrastructure to further enforce encryption of messages

sent over DMS and authentication of the sender.