Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said Monday they have jointly developed next-generation encryption technology for electronic data and document transmission.

The companies said they developed implementation technology based on an elliptical curve cryptosystem, which features more greatly enhanced security functions than those of current systems.

The new technology is expected to become a standard for e-governance and e-commerce in Japan.

The elliptical curve cryptosystem utilizes mathematical operations over elliptical curves and encrypts data using short key lengths.

The three firms said this marks the world's first development of implementation technology in the field of cryptography that integrates technologies of leading high-tech companies.