Weston, FL - Thales today announced that its industry-leading HSM 8000 and RG7000 product ranges support 3DES DUKPT (Derived Unique Key Per Transaction) and EMV2000. This announcement reinforces Thales' commitment to support developing security standards required for major markets, regionally and globally. This is a significant milestone for the HSMs, which are the most widely used host security modules in the world.

The HSM 8000 is the latest version of Thales' well-established HSM family and features enhanced performance and validated security for banking and financial transaction processing. Primarily designed to address the ATM/POS market and back office security services, the HSM 8000 provides all the functionality to address the needs of acquirers, switches and issuers for the processing of magnetic stripe and chip card transactions (EMV). It has been integrated with the leading transaction processing software addressing this market, including ACI Worldwide's BASE24®, eFunds' CONNEX™ and IST®, S2 Systems' OpeN/2®, and Mosaic Software's Postilion.

"ACI Worldwide and Thales e-Security worked together to deliver this new functionality to the market," said Jim Shaffer, ACI Worldwide's senior product manager for security.  "We have tested BASE24 ® Release 6.0 Version 4 with these new releases for both the 7000 and 8000 HSM ranges, and are now ready to support 3DES DUKPT for our Point-of-Sale customers well in advance of the industry mandates."

This new generation HSM 8000 offers a flexible solution for card transaction processing by providing 10/100 Ethernet, Asynchronous and SNA connectivity as standard. In addition, a high-bandwidth, optical fiber Enterprise System Connection (ESCON) option is available to meet the demands of IBM mainframe environments.

The HSM 8000 modules are fully backward compatible with the HSM 7000 range incorporating all of the features of the successful HSM 7000 range on a brand new technology platform, ensuring a seamless migration path for Thales' existing customer base.

Paul Meadowcroft, Head of Transaction Security, e-Security activities, Thales, commented: “Our HSM products have been a key security component at the heart of the global card payments infrastructure for over 20 years. The delivery of important new features such as Triple-DES DUKPT and EMV 2000 demonstrates Thales' continued commitment to supporting new standards, and provides our customers with the confidence that Thales can satisfy their security needs now and for many years to come.”

About Thales
Thales is an international electronics and systems group, serving Defense, erospace, Security and Services markets. The group employs 61,500 people and generated revenues of $13 billion in 2003.

Operating in three main markets covering e-security, card payment, and network security, the e-Security activity of Thales addresses 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.

Visit Thales at Booth #3113 during BAI in Las Vegas, Nevada – November 16-18, 2004.

Thales Media Contact
Rochelle Hopke
Manager, Marketing Communications
Rochelle.hopke@thalesesec.com
Tel: 954-888-6297

Thales Company Contact
Doug Grote
Business Development Manager, Americas
Doug.grote@thalesesec.com
Tel: 954-888-6203