Benchmark Applies GuardTime for Verifiable Proof of Intellectual Property Integrity and Protection

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Dec 8, 2011) - Data integrity service provider GuardTime (www.guardtime.com) today announced that Benchmark Solutions (www.benchmarksolutions.com), a financial services technology company and the only producer of unbiased, streaming market-derived prices for the fixed income and derivatives markets, will use GuardTime Keyless Signatures to protect its intellectual property (IP), and confidential documents. The GuardTime technology is a software-generated tag for electronic data that provides proof of time, origin, and that not a single bit of the data has changed since the point in time it was signed. The tag, referred to as a Keyless Signature, never expires and verification relies only on mathematics with no dependence on keys, secrets, tokens, certificates, or any third parties.

Why is this important? Because this process ensures an ironclad, independently-verifiable proof of time when an invention was made, along with proof-of-invention ownership that adheres to U.S. "first-to-invent" requirements. The process also ensures that the data associated with the IP is legally-admissible as evidence in the event of an attack aimed at violating patent rights.

Benchmark's BMark(SM) Real-Time solution provides continuous market-derived real-time pricing data for fixed-income and derivatives products -- starting with corporate bonds and credit default swaps, with ongoing expansion slated across other OTC asset classes.

Says Peter Cotton, Benchmark's Chief Scientist, "We saw the value in cryptographically timestamping intellectual property, notwithstanding possible changes to patent law. The GuardTime solution was an easy win and, given the simplicity of the product, we envisage other uses for the technology going forward."

Using patent-pending Market Calibrated Framework(SM) technology, the BMark Real-Time solution provides unbiased, streaming prices for over 2000 CDS curves across six distinct tenors, and 90% of the corporate bond volume monitored on TRACE. Over 12 million market inputs are analyzed to generate 118 million market-derived prices each trading day with updates every 10 seconds, providing up-to-the-minute assessments of market conditions, credit risk and the complex dynamics of the credit landscape.

To maintain a competitive position, it's critical for organizations to protect its IP. Using GuardTime Keyless Signatures to sign its IP data, Benchmark Solutions will effectively protect its in-progress inventions, pending patents, and granted patents.

About Benchmark Solutions
Benchmark Solutions was founded in the wake of the credit crisis in September 2009 to address fundamental shortcomings in price transparency and independence in the fixed-income and derivatives markets -- a market that currently trades in the dark with little or no real-time pricing data for a majority of its assets. Backed by Warburg Pincus and led by CEO, Jim Toffey (Founder and CEO of Tradeweb), Benchmark has spent two years and significant financial investment in technology and human capital to solve this problem.

Benchmark's flagship solution creates the industry's first and only fully independent, streaming, market-driven pricing for US corporate bonds and CDS with ongoing expansion across other OTC asset classes.

Based on a patent-pending market-calibrated technology, the firm provides comprehensive pricing transparency and analytic solutions offering pre-trade intelligence to empower investment decisions and enhance their clients' daily workflows, helping them understand the true market value of assets, discover previously unseen buy/sell opportunities, and proactively manage risk in real-time.

Benchmark employs over 70 professionals in finance and technology and is headquartered in New York.

For more information, please visit www.benchmarksolutions.com

About GuardTime
GuardTime was founded with the goal of solving one of the biggest problems in computing: how to be sure electronic data is authentic. GuardTime's Keyless Signatures provide proof of origin and that not a single bit of the data has changed since a specific point in time. The verification of the signatures can be done offline without reliance on keys, secrets, or the existence of a trusted third party. GuardTime's mission is to change the world to one where Keyless Signatures are ubiquitous and a natural part of the everyday data lifecycle, whether on disk, in transit, or in the Cloud. The company was recently selected as co-winner of the Innotribe $100K Start-Up Challenge, honoring the company as one of the world's most promising financial technology start-ups. Visit http://www.guardtime.com for more information about using Keyless Signatures for signing your data.

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