Messaging

E-Mail Security in the Worx

This product offers ISPs encrypted e-mail. It's a service designed to be offered to small- and medium-sized business, at first.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [February 13, 2006]

It's a month of public key infrastructure stories. Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based Echoworx is reaching out to ISPs with an encrypted e-mail system for better privacy and deliverability, including e-mail that only the recipient can open.

The initial target market is small- and medium-sized business, but, says Chris Erickson, Echoworx executive vice president of corporate development, "everyone in the world can use it—my mom, my daughter, my lawyer. SMBs are the target market because they have legal and competitive issues. There's HIPPA, there's SOX, they need to make sure that the personal information in their e-mails is secure. Lawyers put those legal disclaimers at the bottom of e-mails, but is that really effective?"

Erickson says that a key virtue of Echoworx's system over its competitors is that it allows customers to send secure e-mails to recipients who are not already subscribers. If the recipient is not a subscriber, the system asks the sender to type in the question and answer for a shared secret (such as what is your pet's name, and the correct answer).

The recipient gets an e-mail that says they have a received, say, a Verizon Secure-mail message, and directs the recipient to Verizon's e-mail pickup center. The recipient answers the question and receives the message. The recipient gets three attempts to provide the correct answer.

Verizon charges $6.95 for this service. Echoworx gets a portion of that revenue.

A key sales point to ISPs is that the service allows ISPs to obtain revenue from customers who get their Internet from an ISP's rival. Erickson, who is in Toronto, says, "I pay Verizon $6.95 per month for this service and I'm not even in Verizon territory."

Another key point is that any out of network recipient sees a banner from the ISP promoting the secure e-mail product when they receive their message. That's called "viral marketing."

Erikson says that ISPs are an ideal channel for Echoworx and allow it to focus on doing what it's good at. "Echoworx built the infrastructure to handle the PKI and deal with encryption. Instead of going to each individual SMB, what we wanted to do was say, go to Verizon, or other ISPs, and just simply buy it from them as if it was Symantec anti-virus."

After signing up major ISPs in North America and Europe, the next step is to educate the potential customers. "Our long term goal," says Erikson, "is to secure much more than e-mail. We aim to leverage trust gained through providing good service."

— End