FrontBridge Technologies put its best foot forward with an acquisition
and the launch of a new managed service, the company said Monday.
The Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based firm, which specializes in secure e-mail
and messaging software used to protect business networks and corporate
e-mail systems, said it has acquired Irvine, Calif.-based MessageRite for an
undisclosed sum.
The company said the purchase will help it bolster its
message archiving products for both e-mail and instant messaging
applications.
“This acquisition, combined with the announcement today of our fully
managed secure e-mail service, significantly changes the messaging market
landscape, creating a clear technology leader in the managed service
provider market,” Steve Jillings, FrontBridge president and CEO, said in a
statement. “MessageRite, with its comprehensive technologies for archiving
and compliance, is the perfect addition to our technology roster, enabling
us to offer end-to-end services for the entire messaging stream, from
complete message filtering to archiving messages for compliance.”
Compliance has been the longstanding mantra of FrontBridge, whose
products help fulfill reporting requirements, such as SEC 17a-4, NASD 3010,
and Sarbanes-Oxley. Message archiving is in high demand, as companies are
required by law to store and access electronic communications.
MessageRite’s technology intercepts all internal and external messages
and stores a fully indexed copy of each one in a secure offsite message
archive center. Through a secure interface, administrators and compliance
officers can easily search and retrieve messages within their archives as
needed.
IT research firm Enterprise Strategy Group estimates that organizations that must
comply with internal or external regulations will retain approximately
500 petabytes
“A majority of these businesses must seriously consider whether they want
to manage this process in-house or outsource it,” said
Brian Babineau, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “Storing this data is one
task, and securing the vast amount of data is another.”
FrontBridge said existing MessageRite customers and infrastructure would
eventually be transitioned onto the FrontBridge SMART Network, a distributed
data center.
In a separate statement, FrontBridge launched its first managed service
for desktop-to-desktop encrypted e-mail. The company said it went with
Voltage Security as its strategic technology partner.
“Encrypted desktop-to-desktop communication has not taken off because
existing methods have proven cumbersome to use and very difficult to deploy
and manage,” FrontBridge’s Jillings said in a statement. “Yet, government and corporate
regulations require that privileged communications are encrypted.
“We’re
taking secure e-mail to the mainstream by making the encryption and
decryption of messages as simple as clicking a button in a standard e-mail
client without complicated passwords or PKI [public key infrastructure]. After surveying the market, we
selected Voltage as the most appropriate solution for our requirements.”
FrontBridge said it would market and sell its subscription e-mail
service — known as FrontBridge Secure E-mail — as part of its family of
message management tools, which include managed services for spam filtering,
virus protection, message archiving, content policy enforcement and disaster
recovery. Companies in the health care, financial, and legal industries use
the platform.
The platform allows for the collection of day-to-day transactions, including
transparent roaming and full support of mobile messaging devices, such as the
Research In Motion’s Blackberry. The company said its Secure E-Mail
service does not require pre-enrollment of recipients to send secure ad hoc
communication.
“We are seeing increasing demand for managed service offerings in the
market,” said Sathvik Krishnamurthy, president and CEO of Voltage. “Our
partnership with FrontBridge enables enterprises to add a secure messaging
service in a completely managed environment. Network administrators don’t
have to manage and maintain an additional system and get the added benefit
of automatic network redundancy and failover
E-mail.”
The new service is also the first to leverage Voltage’s Identity-Based
Encryption (IBE) technology. IBE is a cryptography technology that the
company said removes the hurdles associated with PKI
Instead of relying on traditional PKI, FrontBridge
Secure E-mail lets users simply use the recipient’s e-mail address to send
and receive business communications.
FrontBridge said it will also offer its completely managed service to
resellers like Anitian Enterprise Security.
