No Silicon Valley university or dot com startup presented the solution to these problems. Instead, it comes from a world of tradition, history and stately disdain for bleeding-edge change. A group of financial institutions, operating through an organization called Identrus, is set to be the driving force behind secure electronic business. ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays, The Chase Manhattan Bank, CIBC, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Sanwa Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland. Almost all of the financial institutions of any serious significance are already participating.
Certificates become less trustworthy over time.
These cloistered institutions have applied their several hundred years of history and experience managing trust and risk in the bricks and mortar world to the Internet. Their centuries of experience in transaction intermediation as trusted third parties have produced, bar none, the richest most elaborate policy and legal framework for commerce that is available today. Many certificate authorities have already built that market and are specialists in it. What we are talking about is an infrastructure of the quality that will permit Japan Airlines and Boeing to do an RFP, a commercial bid and proposal, a contract award, the invoicing and the payment for several Jumbo jets, all on the Internet. This is a whole different ball game.