Since its establishment, the Alliance has attracted the participation of over 60 International players in the Information Technology industry. Members include IBM, Sun Microsystems, Baltimore Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Apple Computer Inc., RSA and Entrust Technologies. Public Key Cryptography, has been in use for many years. It involves the encryption of data under a known public key so that only the holder of a corresponding secret key can decrypt it. One of the most challenging problems posed by this form of cryptography is that, in the absence of the decrypting key, it is virtually impossible to retrieve encrypted data.
Some governments also require key recovery for law enforcement purposes.
The Key Recovery Alliance concerns itself with designing mechanisms and procedures for encryption key recovery, in order to satisfy government, industry and user requirements. Baltimore Technologies Baltimore Technologies is a world leader in the provision of Information Security products and systems. Baltimore Technologies also provides a range of C and Java cryptography libraries and supplies design and consultancy services to the IT security industry. Over thirty people are employed at its headquarters in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin. Baltimore Technologies was founded in 1976 and is privately held.