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Qatar Central Bank
SafeNet Selected to Protect the State of Qatar's
Financial Communications and Transactions
Background
The Qatar Central Bank is one of the most advanced central banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the regulatory authority for banks, exchange houses, investment companies, and financial companies within the state of Qatar.
Business Challenge
Qatar Central Bank was looking for a solution for securing financial
transactions, communications, and digital identities. Existing MPLS
networks resulted in the lack of secure communication between QCB
and the local banks in Qatar for financial bank transfers. Additionally,
there was no way to secure and manage the identities of the system
users, in order to create reliable and secure non-repudiation
characteristics.
Qatar Central Bank was looking for a complete end-to-end solution for
their infrastructure that would secure the inter-bank network and
provide:
- Secure local money transactions between local banks
- Provide local banks with a means for trusting and securing
communications
- Offer users a single sign-on feature for local applications
- Have a reliable PKI based infrastructure for future applications
that need security, integration, and non-repudiation
SafeNet Solution
After reviewing several solutions in the market, QCB selected SafeNet.
They chose SafeNet because they could get a complete end-to-end
solution from one vendor that provided the most secure products
available and could be easily integrated into the current infrastructure.
“When looking for a solution to handling the local money transactions
of a country like Qatar, we felt we had to use the most advanced
solution. We wanted it to be easy to integrate, manage, and the most
secure. SafeNet was chosen because they were able to secure the root
key of QCB Certificate Authority and provide the local banks' operators
with a true end-to-end secure connection with two-factor
authentication. This enabled the local banks' operators to securely
submit their customers' transactions,” said Global Forte partner for the
QCB project.
SafeNet and its regional partner, Global Forte, deployed a complete PKI
infrastructure using Microsoft Certificate Authority, SafeNet Luna
Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), and the Time Stamping Authority.
This infrastructure enabled QCB to issue certificates to system users for
authentication, signing, and securing communications between local
banks by signing and encrypting financial transactions, payments, and
email communications. The PKI infrastructure deployed included:
- SafeNet Luna PCI HSM- the fastest, most secure HSM on the
market, used for securing the QCB's Certificate Authority root
key.
- SafeNet Luna SP HSM- the most secure, and easiest to manage
and integrate HSM that is a web server embedded HSM that is
used along with Global Forte's java based Time Stamping
Authority (TSA) to achieve date and time non-repudiation.
- SafeNet High Assurance 2000 with SMC- hardware based
solution for managing VPN connectivity providing secure VPN
connectivity with two-factor authentication tunnels established
between QCB and the Local Banks true end to end
communication security.
- SafeNet iKey Tokens-provide strong authentication for securely
generating user keys pairs and two-factor authentication for
VPN connectivity as well as for signing transactions and
exchanged data.
- SafeNet Axis- used for establishing single sign-on capabilities.
Conclusion
Shortly after deploying the SafeNet PKI Infrastructure, Global Forte realized
immediate results including:
- A secure communication line between QCB and the local banks in
Qatar
- The successful deployment of a Microsoft Certificate Authority to
secure and validate system users and digital identities.
- A trusted means for the banks to time-stamp financial and payment
transactions.
- A complete set of integrated solutions providing application
integration.
- The convenience of a single sign-on option that allows the users to logon
into any application they specify automatically.
- The ability to launch a new service for local inter-bank transactions
that was more cost effective compared to other alternatives, and
provided for secure communications between banks.
In addition to the successful installation and deployment of the entire PKI
infrastructure solution, the Qatar Central back was more than pleased with
the integration of Global Forte's TSA with the Luna SP. They are now able to
digitally sign any type of transaction in an impressive amount of time, and do
it securely.
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