The use of RSA is practically ubiquitous today. 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 is planned to be in many more. It is built into current 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. In addition, RSA is incorporated into all of the major protocols for secure Internet communications, including SSL (see Question 134), S-HTTP (see Question 133), SEPP, S/MIME, S/WAN, STT and PCT (see Question 136). It is also used internally in many institutions, including branches of the U.S. government, major corporations, national laboratories, and universities.
As of the time of this publication, RSA technology is licensed
by about 150 companies. The estimated installed base of RSA encryption
engines is around 20 million, making it by far the most widely
used public-key cryptosystem in the world. This figure is expected
to grow rapidly as the use of the Internet and the World Wide
Web grows at a blistering pace. For a partial list of software
and hardware products implementing RSA, see The 1995 Computer
Security Products Buyer's Guide. A more complete list of RSA
licensees and OEM products can be found at <
http://www.rsa.com/>.