Sendmail enters messaging security

On the 25th anniversary of the introduction of Internet e-mail, Sendmail is announcing plans to extend beyond its message transfer agent base into the world of e-mail security.

Sendmail this week is scheduled to announce plans to bring security and compliance features not only to e-mail but also to Web mail, instant messaging, peer-to-peer communications and FTP. The first e-mail was sent a quarter of a century ago by e-mail inventor and Sendmail founder Eric Allman.

"We've come a long way in terms of volume and dependence of corporations around the world using e-mail to conduct business," says Donald Massaro, CEO of Sendmail. "Even Eric [Allman] admits he could never have anticipated 25 years ago what's going on today, in terms of both good and bad things."

Over the next few months the company plans to release details about its Trusted Unified Messaging Platform, which is designed to provide the security, compliance and policy management that large corporations need to effectively run their electronic communications, Massaro says. Security features will include cleansing inbound and outbound messages by providing spam, virus and phishing protection, while the compliance aspect will center on keeping the content of outbound messages inline with corporate and regulatory guidelines.

In addition, Sendmail's Trusted Unified Messaging Platform will offer encryption to protect sensitive data and authentication of the message's sender and receiver. Some of this technology belongs to Sendmail, and other aspects will be provided via third-party partnerships, Massaro says.

Entering the crowded messaging security market today is a bold move, even for a company as well known - and well entrenched in enterprise accounts - as Sendmail.

Investment banker Jeffries Broadview, which calls this the secure content management market, identifies about 110 companies and service providers already offering products and services in this space.

Sendmail claims to already have its MTA installed in 450 of the largest 1,000 corporations in the world. The company believes it will successfully win over large corporate accounts for its new products from secure messaging competitors such as IronMail, Secure Computing, Proofpoint and Microsoft by giving customers the option to adopt one piece of its security product strategy at a time. Customers will quickly learn that thanks to Sendmail's integrated administration dashboard from which all the required provisioning, reporting and policy management can be centrally controlled, the more pieces they adopt the easier administration becomes, Massaro says.

"That's the compelling reason for [customers] to try and move over time from this patchwork of security to get to trusted messaging," he says.

Sendmail will make the new products available as software that runs on Linux and Solaris, or as an appliance. The company also has committed to making its Trusted Unified Messaging Platform work with the competing Postfix open source MTA.

Exact product names, packaging and pricing for the new platform have not yet been announced.