It’s been a few years since I last mentioned Voltage Security and its innovative use of Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) (see “Start-up aims to ease sending and receiving encrypted mail”). The four-year old company is still chugging along, but now it is reaching out beyond the corporate customer base to small business, SOHO users and even individuals who wish to have the security of encrypted e-mail without the baggage of standard PKI.

If you’re not familiar with IBE, see the above referenced newsletter which has a good, extensive example of how it works. In a nutshell, by simply installing a plug-in to your e-mail client you can begin securely encrypting all your outgoing e-mails – or only those you wish to encrypt – without the bother of enrolling at a Certificate Authority, installing certificates or wondering about revocation lists. You can learn the technical details by reading Voltage’s white papers on the subject.

Previously, to use IBE you would have to install an application suite on your mail servers. This pretty much limited its use to those organizations that controlled their own mail servers. Now, though, Voltage has launched a new Web-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) application called the Voltage Security Network (VSN). The VSN gives anyone instant e-mail privacy within their own/everyday e-mail inbox. It ensures that messages and attachments can be opened and read only by the person to whom they are sent. Users can protect company or client communications, as well as sensitive legal, financial, health, insurance and other information. The VSN is designed for individuals and small businesses including SOHO and remote workers and contractors. It could also be used by larger enterprises that want to extend secure e-mail to third parties (such as partners and suppliers) without having to manage anything.

The VSN helps solve serious barriers to e-mail security with simplicity, usability and low cost of ownership. For example:

* Instead of forcing employees, partners and customers to learn how to set-up and use complex secure e-mail encryption products from other vendors, or to create a separate location for secure messages, the VSN is immediately usable by anyone within their existing e-mail environments — and there’s no requirement to download, learn, manage or administer.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.