Swiss Bank Adopts Linoma’s IBM i Encryption Tool

August 9, 2011 Alex Woodie

The Swiss banking system is renowned for the tight-lipped approach it takes to information security. This has led to a steady stream of business from wealthy individuals and organizations who want their affairs handled with the highest of confidence. So when IDB (Swiss) Bank sought an encryption solution for its IBM i environment, its worth noting that it selected a solution from Linoma Software.

IDB (Swiss) Bank provides private banking and financial services to private and corporate clients around the world. The bank, which is headquartered in Geneva and has a branch in Zurich, is a subsidiary of Israel Discount Bank, which has more than 200 branches around the world.

IDBS debated whether to adopt a hardware encryption solution or use a software solution to meet its encryption needs, according to a case study posted on Linoma’s website.

Initially, it was in favor of a hardware encryption solution, because it appeared to be faster, more integrated, easier to implement. However, it ultimately chose to go with a software solution due to several factors. First, the software approach was less expensive.

Compatibility was also a big factor. If IDBS chose the hardware approach, it would require the bank to outfit all of its subsidiaries and operations with the proper equipment to ensure that each of them could decrypt and restore the backups if needed. With a software approach, getting the proper encryption and decryption capability was simply a matter of installing the right software, and possibly buying another license.

Future compatibility was also a factor. “Banks are required to save and restore data for 10 years, but it is common for hardware to be replaced every few years,” an unnamed bank official says in Linoma’s case study. “Choosing one particular hardware solution would lock us in with a proprietary device and therefore limit our upgrade options.”

The bank demoed two IBM i encryption solutions, including Linoma’s Crypto Complete. The two offerings were comparable in functionality and had roughly the same price, which was much less than a hardware encryption solution.

Three factors swung the pendulum in favor of Crypto Complete, according to the case study. First, the Linoma offering performed encryption routines 20 percent faster than the other offering. Secondly, the Linoma documentation was “more detailed” than the competition. Lastly, the fact that a local company, Linoma’s French business partner European Software Business Development, was available to provide assistance made IDBS feel better about the Linoma offering.