The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son has selected QuoVadis Limited to provide secure e-business solutions to the bank and its customers worldwide.

"Bank of Butterfield is committed to providing online services that exceed the needs of our customers, whether they want to pay a utility bill in Bermuda or manage corporate accounts worldwide," commented Alan Thompson, president & CEO of Bank of Butterfield.

"Working with QuoVadis, we can reinforce that speed and convenience with security and privacy for our clients."

Based in Bermuda, QuoVadis provides electronic identity and digital signature solutions and is the island's only government-accredited certification services provider.

With its strong focus on security, QuoVadis manages digital certificate operations for the worldwide activities of several leading financial services firms and specialty insurers.

"We are extremely pleased to provide the security foundation for the bank's online services," noted Tony Nagel, CEO of QuoVadis. "Our speciality is security. By leveraging our world-class certificate authority, the Bank can maintain focus on its own specialties: creating financial services that make its customers' lives better."

The bank will use QuoVadis digital certificates to identify users and to verify their authorisations, as well as to ensure privacy of information both in transit and storage. Digital signatures will provide legally binding and tamper-proof records of transactions and their participants. The technology, also called public key infrastructure, is the dominant form of e-security used by banks and governments worldwide.

"Countries like Bermuda, Cayman, and the Channel Islands are hubs for transactions from all over the world, and the banks are key to their success. QuoVadis provides the foundation of accountability, security, and privacy so that even the most sophisticated business may be executed online," noted Mr. Nagel.

The growing international attentiveness towards security has driven rapid growth among managed security companies like QuoVadis. According to Nigel Hickson, an e-Commerce Advisor to the Bermuda Government who has been active with e-security issues in Europe, "Because security is so specialised, it is now often outsourced in the real world. It's no different from buildings hiring security companies to supply guards and banks using secure couriers to move their cash. This makes sense for online security as well, which requires a substantial initial investment and ongoing specialised expertise."

Mr. Hickson went on to congratulate both QuoVadis and Bank of Butterfield, "This is a further example of the technological strength we have on the e-business front in Bermuda, and the importance our leading institutions are rightly paying to the security of their customers' transactions."