TietoEnator chooses Thales' HSM 8000 to provide Azerbaijan's developing electronic payment infrastructure with highest level of transaction processing security

Thales today announced that its Host Security Module (HSM) has been selected by TietoEnator, a leading IT services provider, for use within the national Card Processing Centre of Azerbaijan. The Card Processing Centre is the primary nation-wide payment card data processing service provider to commercial banks in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Thales’ HSM 8000 provides the cryptographic functions to secure a range of financial applications and will fully satisfy the issuing, acquiring, switching and clearing needs for the processing of magnetic stripe and EMV chip card transactions amongst the banks of Azerbaijan.

Thales’ HSM 8000 is a tamper-resistant security server and is being used to secure applications such as ATM and POS networks, inter-bank funds transfer and share dealing systems. The HSM 8000 supports digital signatures and certificates and, crucially, can accommodate a wide variety of interfaces and key management schemes.

Thales dominates the back-end transaction security market and the HSM 8000 is the foremost product of its kind. TietoEnator’s decision to use the HSM 8000 for this critical nation-wide implementation in Azerbaijan further endorses Thales’ position as the market leader and highlights the company’s continued efforts to bring the highest level of transaction security to the CIS territories.

Maris Ozolins, Senior Vice-President, TietoEnator Banking & Insurance said, “Higher-level card processing services is an essential step in the development of a modern payment card system for banks in Azerbaijan. The significance of the project is underlined by its support from the state government and the World Bank. We always insist that a project of this nature employs the utmost standards of security and the Thales HSM 8000 is certified to the most rigorous security standards and fulfils all of our requirements.”
Paul Meadowcroft, Head of Transaction Security of the e-Security activities of the Thales Group, said: "This implementation follows a number of similar projects that Thales has undertaken in other CIS territories. The Card Processing Centre is sure to have a considerable impact on the country of Azerbaijan, and as a leading provider of hardware security modules to the world’s banks, Thales is confident that its HSM 8000 module will be a key element of the country’s electronic payment infrastructure as it moves toward EMV compliance.”

About Thales
Thales is an international electronics and systems group, serving defence, aerospace, services and security markets. The group employs 61,500 people worldwide and generated revenues of 10.6 billion in 2003.

Operating in three main markets covering e-security, card payment and network security, Thales’ e-security activities address the business, government and finance industries’ need for cryptographic security products and solutions. Over half of the world’s banks, together with the majority of the busiest exchanges, currently use Thales technology. For more than 20 years the company has been at the forefront of security and payment technology, co-operating and contributing to set the industry standards used for financial transactions and e-commerce globally. Thales’ e-security business offers a wide range of security solutions to protect Government and Defence critical information infrastructures, thereby positioning the company as a leading worldwide supplier of certified network security products.