SAN JOSE – Trend Micro Inc. has announced that it has expanded its e-mail encryption product line with the availability of the Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway 5.0 that has been designed to help medium and large businesses encrypt e-mail communication on the Internet gateway.

Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway integrates with Trend Micro gateway messaging security solutions such as Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security Suite 7.0 or InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance 7.0 to provide a comprehensive content security and encryption solution. It also interoperates with solutions from other gateway e-mail security vendors by providing comprehensive e-mail encryption and decryption services at the Internet gateway.

Based on the technology acquired with the purchase of Identum in January 2008, Trend Micro’s e-mail encryption solution portfolio can now provide e-mail encryption services at a variety of locations including Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway 5.0 for gateway e-mail encryption; Trend Micro Email Encryption Client 5.0 for desktop-to-desktop e-mail encryption; and Email Encryption for InterScan Hosted Messaging Security for hosted e-mail encryption.

In the past, organizations used Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology to encrypt their e-mails but it was found to be burdensome with a lot of pre-registration, certificate management and subsequent distribution of certificates before encrypted e-mails can be exchanged.

Trend Micro Email Encryption uses Identity-based Encryption (IBE) in conjunction with in-the-cloud encryption key management that avoids the problems of PKI.

IBE enables secure message delivery to anyone with a valid e-mail address. Encrypted content is then pushed from sender to recipient like any other e-mail.

“[IBE] avoids a lot of administrative pain and burdens that are caused by PKI such as having to maintain key servers, maintain certification revocation lists and IT infrastructure that you need,” said Todd Thiemann, senior director of Trend Micro’s Data Protection Segment. “With our solution, we are doing that for our customers in the cloud, we provide an in the cloud service to manage encryption keys but with PKI you had to maintain all that on-premise and deploy the IT resources to maintain it.”

Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway 5.0 runs on VMware’s ESX 3.x and ESXi 3.x environments. Encrypted e-mail can be decrypted using the Trend Micro Email Encryption Client, or recipients can use an optional browser-based reader to view encrypted e-mail without installing software. The Trend solution is also interoperable with third party solutions.

Thiemann said that ideal users for the Trend Micro Email Encryption Client 5.0 are small businesses under 25 users while the Email Encryption for InterScan Hosted Messaging Security are targeted at businesses under a 1000 users but these companies can also use the client version if they so desire. The new Email Encryption Gateway 5.0 is best fitted for large enterprises, he added.

For channel partners, Thiemann said it gives them the opportunity to go out to customers with a complete portfolio from a hosted offering to a gateway solution.

“The win for the Trend Micro channel partners is they are already in touch in medium-sized business and enterprises with our InterScan messaging security suite product so they already know content security. So this allows them to go back to existing customers and do cross-selling of the Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway,” he added.

As well, Thiemann said channel partners have the opportunity to use the new Trend solution to help their customers be compliant with HIPAA and PCI despite the current economic climate.

“Even though customers are in economic pain, they have to invest to secure their communications,” he commented.

Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research Inc., said that IBE systems are one way to get solid encryption and that the market is moving towards encryption.

[Encryption] is a logical addition to a suite of security offerings,” said Osterman. “If you are a security company and have a portfolio of offerings that doesn’t have encryption, in the not too distant future that is going to be a pretty glaring hole in the product line, and so it made sense for Trend to do this.”

Trend Micro Email Encryption Gateway 5.0 subscription starts at $60 per user and will be available December 1, 2008. The Trend Micro Email Encryption Client 5.0 (subscription starts at $60 per user) and the Email Encryption for InterScan Hosted Messaging Security (subscription starts at $18 per user) are available now through Trend Micro’s channel partners.

This column was written by Vanessa Ho of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMarCompany

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