Cryptomathic is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company specializing in the area of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

for e-commerce security systems. The company develops secure software for the financial and governmental industries. It focuses especially on developing back-end solutions using

hardware security module A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages secrets (most importantly digital keys), and performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other crypt ...

s. Cryptomathic has its headquarters in

Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus municipality, Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and app ...

, Denmark. The company was founded in 1986, by three

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

s from University of Aarhus, among them Peter Landrock and Ivan Damgård. It now operates world-wide with offices in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, UK;

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, Germany and

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

, US Cryptomathic has collaborated in research projects with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences to develop Cryptomathic's systems for securing messaging between

s (HSMs). With

Bristol University The University of Bristol is a public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Bristol, which had ...

, Cryptomathic conducted research on

authenticated encryption Authenticated Encryption (AE) is an encryption scheme which simultaneously assures the data confidentiality (also known as privacy: the encrypted message is impossible to understand without the knowledge of a secret key) and authenticity (in othe ...

between HSMs.

Awards and recognition

In 2002, Cryptomathic's chief cryptographer

Vincent Rijmen Vincent Rijmen (; born 16 October 1970) is a Belgium, Belgian cryptographer and one of the two designers of the Rijndael, the Advanced Encryption Standard. Rijmen is also the co-designer of the WHIRLPOOL cryptographic hash function, and the block ...

was named one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35 by the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

TR100. In 2003, Cryptomathic was recognized by the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

as a Technology Pioneer, based on its innovative product for mobile electronic signatures. The term "What You See Is What You Sign" ( WYSIWYS) was coined in 1998 by Peter Landrock and Torben Pedersen of Cryptomathic during their work on delivering secure and legally binding digital signatures for Pan-European projects. In 2004, Cryptomathic received the Visa Smart Star Award for it contributions to the field of

EMV EMV is a payment method based on a technical standard for smart card, smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines which can accept them. EMV stands for "Europay International, Europay, Mastercard, and Visa Inc., ...

and Chip and PIN based on its data preparation offering. In 2010, Cryptomathic's founder, Peter Landrock was named a Finalist for European Inventor 2010 in the "Lifetime Achievement" category by the

European Patent Office The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation

. The member of Cryptomathic's advisory board,

Whitfield Diffie Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie ForMemRS (born June 5, 1944) is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper ''New Dire ...

is co-author of the

Diffie–Hellman key exchange Diffie–Hellman (DH) key exchangeSynonyms of Diffie–Hellman key exchange include: * Diffie–Hellman–Merkle key exchange * Diffie–Hellman key agreement * Diffie–Hellman key establishment * Diffie–Hellman key negotiation * Exponential ke ...

, a method of securely exchanging

cryptographic keys A key in cryptography is a piece of information, usually a string of numbers or letters that are stored in a file, which, when processed through a cryptographic algorithm, can encode or decode cryptographic data. Based on the used method, the key c ...

. Diffie and Hellman were awarded with the 2015

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

for "fundamental contributions to modern cryptography" including

public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

and digital signatures.

References

{{reflist Cryptography companies Companies based in Cambridge Software companies established in 1986 1986 establishments in Denmark