CertCo
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial cryptography, Public key infrastructure |
| Founded | March 1994 |
| Founder | Frank Sudia, Peter Freund |
| Defunct | March 2002 |
| Headquarters | New York City , United States |
Area served | International |
| Products | Identity Warranty system, Acquire electronic payment system, OCSP responder for X.509 certificates |
CertCo, Inc. emerged as a financial cryptography startup originating from Bankers Trust during the 1990s. Based in New York City with additional offices located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the firm concentrated on managing risks associated with cryptographic services. Its primary offerings revolved around public key infrastructure (PKI), including an Identity Warranty system designed to monitor and insure identity claims in financial dealings; an electronic payment solution named Acquire; and an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) responder to verify X.509 public key certificates. Although the company developed groundbreaking technology and secured several patents, it ultimately shut down in Spring 2002 after failing to achieve substantial market penetration.
Early history
Established in March 1994 by entrepreneurs Frank Sudia and Peter Freund as Bankers Trust’s internal unit called BT Electronic Commerce (BTEC), CertCo was spun off in November 1996 with support from both strategic and financial backers, facilitated by Goldman Sachs.
Among the notable initial team members were Rich Ankney, Ed Appel, Alan Asay, Ernest Brickell, David Kravitz (the creator of the Digital Signature Algorithm), Yair Frankel, Dan Geer, C.T. Montgomery, Jay Simmons, Nanette Di Tosto, Paul Turner, Mark Jefferson, and Moti Yung.
At the outset, CertCo licensed the "Fair Cryptosystem" key escrow patents from MIT Professor Silvio Micali and intended to build a Commercial Key Escrow System. However, due to evolving policy landscapes that diminished market demand, this system never reached commercialization.
Vision
Together with Bankers Trust, CertCo helped establish a banking consortium aimed at functioning as a PKI certificate authority for international commerce. This collaboration resulted in the 1999 creation of Identrus, which was later renamed Identrust. Nevertheless, the participating banks opted for a vendor-neutral strategy rather than adopting CertCo’s proprietary technology. Instead, CertCo advanced a risk management framework for PKI that incorporated transaction-level insurance and introduced a distributed, proactively secured certificate authority architecture intended to remove single points of control and minimize coercion risks. This model also sought to defend trust frameworks against attacks similar to the DigiNotar compromise. CertCo championed robust client authentication using PKI and digital signatures—an approach that could have lessened Phishing risks in financial transactions. Presently, comparable strong authentication mechanisms are implemented via U2F devices.
CertCo’s principal commercial partner was SETCo, the operator of the Visa-MasterCard Secure electronic transaction protocol. For SETCo, CertCo delivered pioneering certificate authority technology based on distributed Threshold cryptography. This marked the inaugural deployment of threshold-based signing technology, which has since become prevalent within the Cryptocurrency exchange sector.
Business failure
Although CertCo introduced groundbreaking technology and formed strategic alliances, it was unable to capture a substantial portion of the market and ultimately halted operations in Spring 2002. The company underwent major reductions in its technical workforce toward the end of 2001, a consequence partly linked to diminished investor support following the September 11 attacks, which adversely affected its financial stability and expansion prospects.
Technical contributions
CertCo made important strides in cryptography and public key infrastructure by producing influential scientific research and securing critical patents that bolstered its market position. Key patents granted include:
- Attribute certificates
- Certificate authority
- Digital rights management
- Identity warranty
- Key escrow
- Payment system
The company’s patent portfolio also encompasses innovations such as dynamic key fragment alteration in digital signatures and computer-implemented transaction mechanisms, further strengthening its intellectual property assets.
Standards and policy
Leadership at CertCo played a proactive role in shaping industry standards and regulatory frameworks, participating in prominent organizations like:
- IETF Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)
- American Bar Association Digital Signature Guidelines
- ANSI X9.30 The Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA)
- ANSI X9.31 Reversible Public Key Cryptography (RSA)
- ANSI X9.45 Attribute Certificates
- ANSI X9.57 Certificate Management for Financial Services
These efforts demonstrate CertCo’s influential role in developing security standards essential to its business strategy and sector impact.