FrontBridge service secures e-mail

FrontBridge Technologies this week will add secure e-mail and archiving to its lineup of hosted services to appease corporate users that seek tools to satisfy regulatory compliance issues.

The company has teamed with Voltage Security to offer Secure Email, a service that lets users send encrypted e-mail from their existing client software with the click of a button. The service is based on Voltage's Identity-Based Encryption (IBE), which eliminates the overhead of public-key infrastructure and key management.

FrontBridge also will announce it has acquired MessageRite and will use its technology to launch a corporate service for e-mail and instant-messaging archiving.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

FrontBridge Technologies this week will add secure e-mail and archiving to its lineup of hosted services to appease corporate users that seek tools to satisfy regulatory compliance issues.

The company has teamed with Voltage Security to offer Secure Email, a service that lets users send encrypted e-mail from their existing client software with the click of a button. The service is based on Voltage's Identity-Based Encryption (IBE), which eliminates the overhead of public-key infrastructure and key management.

FrontBridge also will announce it has acquired MessageRite and will use its technology to launch a corporate service for e-mail and instant-messaging archiving.

Company officials say corporate customers could use either to help achieve compliance with government regulations.

"There is a lot of reluctance around the deployment of secure messaging because the perception is that it is too expensive," says Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research. He says only about one in five corporate users is a frequent user of secure mail. "The service approach is a way to go to avoid rolling out an entire infrastructure just to support a few people."

FrontBridge's service works by installing a small piece of desktop software that integrates with Outlook, Lotus Notes or Hotmail e-mail clients. The software adds a button to the client interface that provides one-click process to encrypt e-mail. The service lets users send encrypted e-mail to anyone. The recipient can install the client software or can use a "zero-download" Web-based interface to decrypt the mail, which is stored on his desktop like any other e-mail. The Secure Email service stores a user's private key, which is used to decrypt e-mail he receives.

Voltage's IBE technology lets identities, such as e-mail addresses and phone numbers, be used as public keys. This eliminates the need for certificates, certificate revocation lists and other secure mail infrastructure.

The SecureMail service competes with offerings from Sigaba, Tumbleweed and Zix. CipherTrust, which develops the Ironmail message security appliance, began using the Voltage technology in July as part of its IronMail Privacy Architecture.

FrontBridge's Secure Mail service starts at $8 per month, per user. The archiving service has not been priced.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.