IBM's technology works effectively on highly parallel systems and flexibly with modern hardware's processing capabilities, the company said. He maintains Jutla's research is good, but will not be as widely used and quickly accepted as IBM claims. Cryptographic implementations are not generally hampered by the inefficiency of algorithms. Rarely is the cryptography the bottleneck of any communications. Schneier also questioned the practicality of combining the two steps from an engineering standpoint.
Most security protocols prefer separating encryption and authentication.
The key management is different, the security requirements are different and the implementation requirements are different. Ed Gerk, a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force's PKI-X working group, also is suspicious of IBM being first and faster. But he believes the company's invention is still noteworthy. Among issues that can be improved by combining the two steps are privacy, offline control and non-repudiation, he says. Gerk adds that he's also developed technology that combines encryption and authentication to secure online voting.