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3.2.16 Is RSA currently in use today?

The use of RSA is undergoing a period of rapid expansion and may become ubiquitous within a few years. It is currently used in a wide variety of products, platforms and industries around the world. It is found in many commercial software products and planned for many more. RSA is built into current or planned operating systems by Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and Novell. In hardware, RSA can be found in secure telephones, on Ethernet network cards, and on smart cards. RSA is also used internally in many institutions, including branches of the U.S. government, major corporations, national laboratories, and universities.

Adoption of RSA seems to be proceeding more quickly for authentication (digital signatures) than for privacy (encryption), perhaps in part because products for authentication are easier to export than those for privacy (see Question 3.1.6).



Denis Arnaud
12/19/1997