The renewed collaboration is an effort to ensure safer online business transactions and government services.

"We live in a world of computers and electronic networks, where governments and businesses rely heavily on computerized processes for most, if not all, of their day-to-day activities," said Tsutomu Kanai, president of an Asian information security promotion organization.

A secure and trustworthy environment is imperative for the growth of electronic commerce in Asia, where the flow of trade and information is increasing at high speed, Tsutomu said.

"With Internet fraud being one of the major obstacles to online transactions, it is essential to develop trust and confidence in electronic commerce and e-government," he said.

Tsutomu made the remarks to participants at the Asian Public Key Infrastructure Forum (APKI), a three-day conference.

Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, China, and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province, are the members of the forum, established in June 2001 in Tokyo.

Organization of the regional forum was propelled by the earlier formation of similar groups in Europe and the United States, which have taken some joint measures to prevent online risk.

Experts said that by adoption of digital signatures, encryption and decryption (data scrambling and unscrambling) technologies and a comprehensive framework of policies and procedures, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) protects privacy by ensuring that electronic communications are not intercepted or read by unauthorized persons.

The infrastructure also assures the integrity of electronic communications by ensuring that they are not altered during transmission and verifies the identity of the parties involved in an electronic transmission.

"And PKI can ensure that no party involved in an electronic transaction can deny their involvement in the transaction," said Du Lian, deputy-director of China's State Information Center.

Du, also acting as vice-president of APKI, said that the Chinese mainland established a national PKI forum at the end of last year to co-ordinate the application of the infrastructure system in China.

"However, the world is a digital one and security measures should not be separated," said Du.

Du called for more concrete international cooperation in this endeavour.

"Now, Asia should join the activities conducted by PKI organizations in Europe and the United States to enhance cross-continental exchange," Du said.

The conference held in Beijing is the second annual meeting of the Asian forum. More Asian economies are expected to be approved as members.

(China Daily July 4, 2002)