Voltage's hosted Voltage Security Network gives instant e-mail privacy

The foundation for security and enterprise management

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.

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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.

* Instead of forcing users to join static, self-contained communities, the VSN enables dynamic, interconnected business networks to be created on-the-fly as well as easy peer-to-peer secure communications.

* Instead of forcing users to create lookup directories, and store keys and credentials, the VSN eliminates these burdens and generates keys dynamically and automatically as-needed.

* Instead of forcing users to embrace pre-registration of recipients, the VSN provides automatic provisioning on-demand.

The Voltage Security Network will be available in three configurations:

* VSN for Business Professionals: Individual users leverage low-cost subscriptions to the Voltage Security Network.

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