21 February 1999. TTD.

http://www.korealink.co.kr/14_5/199902/t455175.htm

KoreaLink, February 19, 1999

## SEED Wins Popularity Among Info-Security Firms

SEED, an 128 bits symmetric secret code algorithm developed by the Information Security Center last October and expected to be officially announced on the coming 26th has been gaining popularity from domestic information security firms owing to the E-signature endorsement in July.

In particular SEED will be selected as a national standard by the Ministry of Information and Communication and is expected to be adopted essentially to most of private security systems.

SecureSoft plans to apply it to the company's firewall system and PC security product on developing as soon as the Government institute's transfer of technical know-how to private part.

Bakdu Information Technology is expected to apply this algorithm to its EFT-POS terminal for the IC card and release it in the 2nd quarter of the year.

Initech is in process of system developing for the project of Electronic Domestic Investment System by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency(KOTRA) to load SEED. It has already applied it to electronic payment system for internet shopping mall and provided its service.

Addition to them, other domestic made system users are expecting that the symmetric secret code algorithm will be applied basically to almost every security product and focusing on the development of the SEED system.