Cryptomathic is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company specializing in the area of

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

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), performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other cryptograp ...

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. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...

, 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 post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

s from

University of Aarhus Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...

, among them

Peter Landrock Peter Landrock (born August 20, 1948 in Horsens) is a Danish cryptographer and mathematician. He is known for his contributions to data encryption methods and codes. Landrock has been active since the 1970s as research scientist and faculty mem ...

and

Ivan Damgård Ivan Bjerre Damgård (born 1956) is a Danish cryptographer and currently a professor at the Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Academic background In 1983, he obtained a master's degree in mathematics (with minors in ...

. It now operates world-wide with offices in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, UK;

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, Germany;

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

, US and

Sophia Antipolis (wisdom), gr, (Ἀντίπολις, antipolis) ("opposite city" from its position on the opposite side of the Var estuary from Nice, also former name of Antibes, part of the technology park) , postal_code = 06220 (Vallauris), 06250 (Mo ...

, France. Cryptomathic has collaborated in research projects with the

Isaac Newton Institute The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute for mathematics and its many applications at the University of Cambridge. It is named after one of the university's most illustrious figures, the mathema ...

for Mathematical Sciences to develop Cryptomathic's systems for securing messaging between

s (HSMs). With

Bristol University , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

, Cryptomathic conducted research on

authenticated encryption Authenticated Encryption (AE) and Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) are forms of encryption which simultaneously assure the confidentiality and authenticity of data. Programming interface A typical application programming in ...

between HSMs.

Awards and recognition

In 2002, Cryptomathic's chief cryptographer

Vincent Rijmen Vincent Rijmen (; born 16 October 1970) is a 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 cipher ...

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 land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

. In 2003, Cryptomathic was recognized by the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

as a Technology Pioneer, based on its innovative product for mobile electronic signatures. The term "What You See Is What You Sign" (

WYSIWYS In cryptography, What You See Is What You Sign (WYSIWYS) is a property of digital signature systems that ensures the semantic content of signed messages can not be changed, either by accident or intent. P. Landrock, T. Pedersen, "WYSIWYS? -- What y ...

) was coined in 1998 by

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 Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

Smart Star Award for it contributions to the field of

EMV EMV is a payment method based on a technical standard for smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines which can accept them. EMV stands for " Europay, Mastercard, and Visa", the three companies that created th ...

and

Chip and PIN Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific geno ...

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 (born June 5, 1944), ForMemRS, 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 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 key exc ...

, 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 compu ...

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 A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...

References

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