What does EC stand for?

The impact of the elliptic curve method for integer factorisation (developed by my PhD advisor Hendrik Lenstra) has played a role in introducing elliptic curves to cryptographers, albeit for attacking the underlying problem on which RSA is based (the difficulty of factoring integers)," said David Kohel, convenor of the ESF workshop, from the Institut de Mathematiques de Luminy in Marseille, France.

The company also has over 350 patents covering Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

Certicom makes elliptic curve cryptography technology, generally considered a highly efficient form of public-key encryption.

Up for grabs are "new symmetrical objects that have interesting connections with objects in number theory called elliptic curves.

Partnership Certicom The two companies will offer Corporation a hardware-based cryptographic security platform for implementing Elliptic Curve Cryptography in support of the National Security Agency's Suite B encryption requirements.

The patents-in-suit are two of Certicom's fundamental patents used in consumer electronics, in particular its world-leading version of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

Elements of Suite B include the following: Encryption: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) - FIPS 197 Digital Signature: Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) - FIPS 186-2 Key Exchange: Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) or Elliptic Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) - Draft NIST Special Publication 800-56 Hashing: Secure Hash Algorithm-2 (SHA-2)- FIPS 180-2 "Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is the only public key used in Suite B, and therefore, is quickly replacing RSA algorithms as the de facto public key used in security mechanisms.

The island setting is festooned with huge palm trees against the elliptic curve of the island's turquoise sea.