This is good news for the nascent Net-driven commerce in India — but will the wide-spread unease of many lay users with security issues, dampen the whole business of buying and selling? At a special briefing for The Hindu recently, Francis Castello, Verisign’s Business Manager for Authentication Services in Asia-Pacific, unveiled a new Unified Authentication tool that integrates the secure transaction needs of customers with multiple sellers. A tiny device known as a One Time Password or OTP token, generates a new six digit password for every new Net transaction — like booking a train or air ticket or buying a book or CD. If the payment gateway — typically a credit card agency or a pure Internet pay service such as PayMate or PayPal — has signed up for the Verisign Unified service, it will pass the payment only if the randomly generated token number keyed in by the customer matches the number at the payment end. This is an added level of security over and above the normal user name and password combination used by most consumer e-business sites today, explained Mr. The technology is already being used by banks and credit card players — but only for their corporate clients. read more

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