Since August 2002 German universities can apply for a free PKI solution provided by a consortium of spezialized PKI producers. This technology, that is already used by several German financial institutions and is normally very high-priced, will be provided to German universities for free. Baltimore, secaron, Syntegra und SyTrust want to enable the use of open standards in PKI environment for German universities. This allows interoperability with other universities, Government (e.g.. BundOnline2005), industry (e.g. BridgeCA) and the rest of the world (e.g. OpenValidation.org). "Specialized and highly integrated solutions make no sense in a national or global environment ..." says the press officer of secaron AG. "Open standards, standard interfaces and the easy and flexible integration in own business processes are very important today."
There is a high interest in the pki4uni project. First universities showed already interest even before the official start of the project.

More detailed information and the possibility for online application is provided at www.secaron.de/de/pki4uni.