Tánaiste Mary Harney, today (Wednesday 19h May 1999) announced the creation of 29 new jobs over the next three years in a new company called Accelerated Encryption Processing Ltd (AEP) based in Dun Laoghaire Co Dublin. Total investment in this new enterprise amounts to £2.1 million, which includes substantial spending on R&D. Enterprise Ireland is supporting the venture through a grants and equity package.

Accelerated Encryption Processing Ltd is a new company established to manufacture a range of hardware products that will speed up a computer's ability to handle data, which has been encrypted for security reasons.

According to the Tánaiste " The world of E-Commerce is acutely aware of the need for total security over the Internet in order to attract more private and corporate customers. Electronic transactions can be very fast in reaching their destination but are subject to electronic eavesdropping. Therefore, they need to be encrypted in order to be secure. Once security and speed of transmission are assured E-Commerce is likely to boom."

She continued "AEP plans to exploit this emerging market for cryptographic accelerators. These are electronic hardware products that enhance the speed at which computers encrypt and decrypt. While use of the internet is changing the way we do business, its emergence as a business tool presents enterprising companies with a market opportunity to make messages and transactions more secure." According to Chris Fairclough, Managing Director, AEP, " We have established this new company to help our customers overcome the bottlenecks that occur when encrypted messages and transactions arrive at the server. As the industry moves towards stronger encryption, the power available on a typical server's processing unit is not sufficient to handle this additional processing load. By undertaking the encryption processing on a separate module built by AEP the delays caused by encrypting/decrypting the transaction can be eliminated. We have assembled a strong team to establish ourselves as a leading player in the design and manufacture of hardware encryption accelerators, that is designing the engines of E- Commerce. Our products will greatly facilitate the faster and safer world-wide adoption of E-Commerce. Our target market is largely original equipment manufacturers and computer system integrators."

Welcoming the Tánaiste's announcement Mr Gerry Murphy, Director, Industrial Products and Europe, Enterprise Ireland, said, " The importance of developing new Irish owned businesses, which have the capability of competing internationally and generating significant export earnings, cannot be exaggerated. Companies like AEP with specialist technical and market knowledge are well positioned to exploit emerging market opportunities. The founders of AEP were quick to identify a niche in the growing E-Commerce market. Early entry will gain considerable competitive advantage for the company."