Asia PR News

GENEVA, May 31 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ –

- From Identity Cards to e-Government Services, This Flexible Solution
Fulfils Government Needs for Security

Security, terrorism, biometrics. To say the least, these concerns were at
the heart of intense activity during the last few days. Early in the week,
Brussels was receiving the first post-election visit of the US Secretary of
Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, who encouraged Europeans to tune their
security controls to US methods, to improve the effectiveness of the fight
against terrorism. On Friday, at the Hewlett Packard (HP) Innovation Center in
Geneva, the international press was invited to a conference that announced the
creation of a new National Identification System (NIS) developed jointly by HP,
Microsoft and most importantly, Geneva start-up Wisekey.

Even if these events were not truly linked, the fact remains that identity
management remains one of the greatest challenges for government. According to
a study carried out by the US based company, Morgan Keegan, this market
represents approximately US$4.8 billion dollars globally and should reach
US$10.7 billion by 2007. In Europe, more than 120 billion Euros have already
been invested in the public sector in this area (government, police, Lisbon
agenda, etc.); the budget devoted to security has doubled to 70 billion Euros;
and 8 billion Euros have been directed to border protection, stated Pascal
Detemmerman, HP Vice President of Public Sector, on Friday. "Today’s need for
secure identification of individuals on national and international levels is
such that only an alliance between various partners can guarantee the
development of optimal solutions and their success," added Gilles Polin,
director of EMEA e-Government solutions Microsoft.

NOTE: The complete Agefi article can be downloaded in French and English
at: http://www.presseportal.ch/fr/story.htx?firmaid=100006027

Source L’Agefi:
Sylvie Gardel
http://www.agefi.com
E-Mail: s.gardel@agefi.com

Daniel Ybarra
E-Mail: daniel@wisekey.ch
Tel. +41-22-929-57-57
http://www.wisekey.ch

SOURCE: Wisekey SA

CONTACT: Sylvie Gardel of L’Agefi, s.gardel@agefi.com
Daniel Ybarra of Wisekey, daniel@wisekey.ch or +41-22-929-57-57

Web site: http://www.wisekey.ch
http://www.agefi.com