Sep, 2003 : U.S. Dept. of Defense Taps VeriSign for MPKI

📅 September 29, 2003 - VeriSign (verisign.com) announced today it has been selected to provide hosting, security consulting, authentication services and Managed Public Key Infrastructure (MPKI) services for the U.S. Department of Defense's Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), a system that will allow overseas citizens to cast absentee ballots in the 2004 election.

The decision to outsource VeriSign was made in consultation with Accenture. "Accenture chose VeriSign for the SERVE project because of the company's experience and success securing other digital government systems and applications," said Meg T. McLaughlin, chief executive of Accenture eDemocracy Services. "VeriSign's Managed PKI services will allow us to secure SERVE at lower cost and on a more efficient time-table than a proprietary system. Additionally, VeriSign's Managed PKI service will allow us to easily scale to the numbers of states, elections and citizens that will be participating in the project."
VeriSign said SERVE will be delivered through its public key infrastructure and network operations centers.
The company will provide monitoring, management and full disaster recovery services for the solution.
Eight states are participating in the initiative: Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Washington.
"VeriSign is pleased to be participating in SERVE, which will be the largest test to date of the feasibility and benefits of using the Internet to enhance voting access for more Americans," said Barry Leffew, vice president, VeriSign Public Sector. "We look forward to our continuing work with Accenture and the DoD to successfully implement and operate SERVE for the 2004 elections."