Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL; Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Kiyoshi Sato) announced that it has begun sales in Japan of the netHSM networked hardware security module (HSM) from nCipher Corporation Ltd. (Head Office: Cambridge, U.K.; CEO: Alex van Someren) on January 8, 2004. The companys goal is to ship 100 units in the first year, at a sales price of 5.52 million yen.

The biggest advantage of netHSM is that, in addition to strong key protection, management, and acceleration that the existing nCipher HSM offers, it possesses a network interface that allows shared access from multiple servers. This feature not only allows a lower initial investment compared to the installation of multiple HSMs for adding more servers, but also enables better management efficiency by integrating security functions into a single netHSM unit.

Since April 2000, TEL has handled HSMs and other nCipher products in Japan, including support for them. The company is engaged in partnership with RSA Security Japan Ltd. and NTT Software Corporation to sell nCipher products. Over 500 of these products have already been installed, primarily at government agencies, financial institutions, and ISPs. As the newest addition to this lineup, netHSM makes significant contribution to HSM installation in terms of management and cost reduction. TEL expects to offer a higher level of security to a greater number of users in the future.

Main Advantages of netHSM

• Shared encryption resources: Allows cost reductions when installing encryption modules by sharing across multiple servers and sites.

• Strong security environment certified by FIPS 140-2 Level 3: Provides a product security guarantee based on the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), an encryption product standard established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

• Unlimited key protection: Allows nearly unlimited key protection within the HSM through nCiphers proprietary Security World key management protocol.

• Coexistent with other nCipher HSMs: Allows seamless coexistence, even for environments including both netHSM and existing products.

• Redundancy: Enables failovers and load balancing between multiple netHSMs or between HSMs connected in heterogeneous environments.

• High performance: Enables a single netHSM to process up to 1,600 signatures or SSL transactions per second.

• Scalable application security level: Enables to use nCiphers proprietary Security Execution Engine (SEE) technology to achieve higher application security levels.

Sales Price

5.52 million yen

Potential Customers

Government agencies, financial institutions, medical institutions, etc.

Sales and Shipment Schedule

Sales will begin on January 8, 2004, with shipments to follow.

Support Structure

In addition to standard sendback maintenance with a free one-year warranty, TEL will offer hardware support options consisting of both cross-sendback maintenance (sending replacements in advance) and onsite maintenance.

About nCipher

nCipher is redefining cryptographic security to protect points of risk across the enterprise - from network appliances to Web servers, to custom software applications and back-end databases. nCipher provides hardware and software solutions that enable organizations to implement best practice security by addressing the challenges of cryptographic key management and performance. Many of the world's leading organizations - from Microsoft and Barclays Bank to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the U.S. Navy - rely on nCipher to deliver a sound e-security infrastructure. nCipher's products are particularly well suited to organizations with high volumes of

security-sensitive transactions, such as banking and financial institutions, government departments, e-retailers and online service providers. nCipher is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:NCH) and is a member of the FTSE TechMARK and FTSE4Good indices with offices in Cambridge, UK; Boston, Seattle, Paris, Hamburg, Singapore and Tokyo. For more information on

nCipher, visit www.ncipher.com.