CESG Teams with Cellcrypt to Secure Mobile Communications

Voice and messaging encryption provider Cellcrypt will be teaming with the U.K. government's National Technical Authority for Information Assurance CESG to develop a MIKEY-SAKKE technology for securing mobile communications.

MIKEY-SAKKE stands for Multimedia Internet Keying-Sakai-Kasahara Key Encryption. While the name may not necessarily roll right off of the tongue, the method is a key component in providing a full set of standards in the public domain that can provide encryption, message authentication, integrity and replay protection for secure voice and messaging applications.

The technology uses Identity-based Public Key Cryptography (IDPKC) to distribute cryptographic trust without needing digital certificates. It offers additional support for scenarios such as forking, retargeting, deferred delivery and pre-encoded content.

Cellcrypt plans to develop a demonstrator that will allow a smartphone to call a landline using the exchange mechanism. The U.K. government will be able to use it on its private network as its next-generation secure voice standard.

Security solution providers need to say nimble, according to Cellcrypt CEO David Rivington. If they don't, they will never be able to address the evolving protection requirements of threat-aware customers.

“With this latest product development, Cellcrypt is adding a cutting-edge solution to its broad product offering and we are meeting the market need head-on,” said Rivington.

Cellcrypt's service covers Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia smartphones and tablets and interfaces to office phone systems that connect to landlines as well as accessing standard PBX features such as voicemail, conference calling and calling out to the public phone network.

Since the protocol design's motivation is for low-latency real-time communications, many of the defined exchanges finish in one-half to one round trip, with most only requiring a single transmission, or one-half roundtrip.

Products supporting a full MIKE-SAKKE solution are said to be planned for sometime later this year.