eCert still waits to make fortune from PKI technology
At present, the small Warsaw-based technology company provides electronic security solutions, such as safety audits, to six clients, including corporations, universities and government bodies. Using that platform, the company plans to modify its operations to tackle the PKI industry that officially started in Poland with the e-signature bill, signed into law in August. PKI technology secures and authorizes online transactions, such as those requiring e-signatures.
Reviews of the law have been mixed in part because it states that only a select group of companies, such as tech firm Centrast, can provide the technology to banks that will initially be its largest consumers, according to Janusz Rybnik, eCert's president.
"I think the major problem is political," he said. "We have well-connected banks in Poland, so they proposed a low closing market to themselves. (Even successful Western companies) have no rights to sell PKI in Poland."
But eCert has set its sites on a market that doesn't want its company. Rybnik, nevertheless, remains optimistic.
"There are some companies that want to change that law and they are working with it already," he said. "Sooner or later after we enter the European Union, we will have to change that law."
With that in mind, eCert is staying abreast of the PKI market, enough so that it would be able to have a marketable product up and running six months after a change in the law, he said.
Building on market
"We want to build a market on PKI digital signature, but it's too early," Rybnik said.
Such uncertainly, it seems, is natural for eCert.
The company was established 14 years ago by four people, and its first major client was the Interior Ministry for which it provided data-recognition technology that could enable federal law enforcers to spot the vehicle registration number of stolen cars, many of them on their way to the former Soviet Union from Germany.
But the project was trashed.
"We tried to redo the project two to three years ago, but there was no budgetary money," Rybnik said. "They told me it was impossible."
Ironically, he said, there was a better chance of getting a technologically advanced project completed under the communist regime.
"But they had money at the time (in 1988)," he said. "When you asked for money - no problem. They printed (more) again. Today's it's a budgetary problem."
In 1991, eCert suspended its operations due to poor market conditions, but returned to business in 2000 when business prospects looked better.
Teaching the public
Besides the PKI hurdle, Rybnik said the company now has its hands full, mostly with trying to educate the public about technology.
"We still need to spread knowledge about our products," he said. "It's not an easy task."
He said that the Polish public is undecided about the importance of security solutions and of PKI technology, What is more, he said the most difficult job is to convince customers that its service offerings, rather than technology products, are a worthy investment.
"Selling knowledge in Poland is a very hard task (when) negotiations take six to 12 months," Rybnik said. "Customers want to pay for the product, but they don't want to pay for knowledge."
