VeriSign to Supply Bank of America with Strong Authentication

Open Standards Cited In Use of VeriSign® Unified Authentication As Strategic Strong Authentication Platform

February 17, 2005; 12:02 AM
(DomainInformer.com) - MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA. and SAN FRANCISCO CA., RSA Conference 2005 - February 17, 2005 - VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced that Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), one of the world's largest financial institutions, has selected the VeriSign® Unified Authentication solution to support its strategic deployment of strong two-factor authentication.

VeriSign Unified Authentication is a complete range of two-factor authentication methods that will integrate with Bank of America's existing technology environment, without costly additions of disparate hardware and software infrastructure. The solution will allow Bank of America to address a broad spectrum of internal and external security requirements with flexible options.

That flexibility, enhanced by VeriSign's commitment to open standards, was cited as an important factor in the agreement.

"The selection by Bank of America is of great strategic importance to VeriSign and further validates what we have known all along - that a flexible, open standards approach to strong authentication is what the market is looking for. This is an approach VeriSign has supported since the creation of the Initiative for Open AuTHentication (OATH) a year ago." said Judy Lin, executive vice president and general manager, VeriSign Security Services. "The financial services sector in particular has to contend with internal regulatory requirements and external security issues. We are excited to be working with an innovative leader like Bank of America to address these issues by deploying strong authentication solutions."

Rhonda MacLean, Corporate Information Security Executive at Bank of America, cited VeriSign's mature, trusted and user-friendly technology as well as VeriSign's commitment to open standards and interoperability, which add the flexibility to keep improving security in the future.

"The financial services industry is moving quickly towards strong authentication," MacLean said. "So we're delighted that VeriSign shares our belief in open standards, which are essential for us to meet our common goal of continually improving security—not only for our company, but across financial services and indeed across all industries. Strong, two-factor authentication will clearly be an increasingly important component of our security strategy, and we believe open standards will create the co-operation and strong partnerships we need to protect our networks and information today—and tomorrow."

The company will begin by using VeriSign Unified Authentication for internal applications and corporate clients with particular security requirements.

VeriSign Unified Authentication consists of a software and services solution that provides a single, integrated platform for providing and managing all types of two-factor authentication credentials, including tokens and smartcards. The solution integrates with an enterprise's existing directory and identity-management architecture and leverages the VeriSign infrastructure, dramatically reducing the complexity and cost of two-factor authentication.

VeriSign Unified Authentication is available in an "on premise" model, or as an "in-the-cloud" service, which is securely delivered over the Internet for fast and easy implementation without the purchase of additional software and hardware. Bank of America will deploy VeriSign Unified Authentication, using next-generation tokens that will facilitate authenticated and secure communications and transactions.

Earlier this week, VeriSign announced a series of enhancements to the solution, including the availability of the on premise operating model, a state-of-the-art One Time Password (OTP) device for a fraction of the price of current solutions, and a multi-purpose authentication device that contains up to 265MB of secure storage. All devices in the VeriSign token family will operate on the Hashed OTP (HOTP) algorithm introduced earlier this year by OATH. Get more information about these enhancements.

About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) operates intelligent infrastructure services that enable businesses and individuals to find, connect, secure, and transact across today's complex global networks. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.

About Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk-management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving 33 million consumer relationships with more than 5,800 retail banking offices, more than 16,700 ATMs and award-winning online banking with more than twelve million active users. Bank of America is the No. 1 overall Small Business Administration (SBA) lender in the United States and the No. 1 SBA lender to minority-owned small businesses. The company serves clients in 150 countries and has relationships with 98 percent of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 85 percent of the Global Fortune 500. Bank of America Corporation stock (ticker: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information, contact: VeriSign Media Relations: Brendan P. Lewis, [email protected], 650-426-4470 VeriSign Investor Relations: Tom McCallum, [email protected], 650-426-3744 Bank of America Media Relations: Betty Riess, [email protected], 415-622-6397