Kranos Unveils World’s First Secure Enterprise Instant Messaging Service
Dublin, Ireland — May 13, 2004 — Kranos Security Technologies has released the world’s first enterprise Instant Messaging (IM) service to seamlessly incorporate digital signatures and public key encryption. The service, called MessageMate, allows businesses to communicate securely with remote employees, customers, suppliers and partners.
Instant Messaging is a type of communication service that enables users to exchange messages in real time conversations over the Internet. An extremely popular personal communications medium, up to now IM has failed to gain traction in the business community due to security and compliance worries.
“Up to now, security for Instant Messaging services has primarily been provided on-the-wire, if at all”, said Kranos CEO, Terry Wymer. “With MessageMate, the security is end-to-end. Companies who are sensitive to legislative compliance concerns, such as HIPAA, SEC & Sarbanes-Oxley, can now take full advantage of IM as a communications medium”.
The MessageMate service addresses security concerns by employing a Distributed Security – Centralised Administration(tm) (DSCA) approach to managing users and their interactions. Administrators can set policies centrally for users, enforcing digital signing and encryption on messages as well as enabling logging, Spam and Content Filtering. This gives invisible, seamless, end-to-end security.
“We believe that, more often than not, the end user is the wrong person to make decisions related to security. Our approach has been to take very strong, complex security and hide it from the end user”, continued Wymer. “Ease-of-use is imperative in the corporate environment”.
Over two years in development, the MessageMate desktop client also includes standard features such as server stored address books, choice of online states (away etc.), printing and saving of conversations. There is also the ability to tailor the user interface to match corporate branding for those wishing to OEM the product.
The MessageMate address book supports folder hierarchies with colours and icons reflecting user state changes. This makes it easy to see when users are online even when the contact tree is fully compressed. The address book can also be customised using a variety of display and sort options.
“The MessageMate service has opened the door for widespread adoption of Instant Messaging in the enterprise environment”, said Wymer. “This has been reflected in the level of pre-release interest shown by a number of international financial institutions”.
MessageMate is an outsourced, subscription-based service that allows organisations to rollout Instant Messaging without the need for upfront investment in staff or infrastructure. To get more information about MessageMate and related products, please visit the corporate website at www.kranos.com or e-mail info@kranos.com.
About Kranos Security Technologies
Dublin, Ireland based Kranos Security Technologies Ltd. was founded in 2002. Kranos develops its own branded products that use state-of-the-art encryption and digital signature technology for messaging and workflow management. The first of these products, BrokerMate(tm), is a secure platform for extending existing document workflow systems into broker offices allowing for data entry and scanning at source. This greatly decreases turnaround time and costs while increasing business in broker-based market sectors. MessageMate(tm) is the world’s first commercial Enterprise Instant Messaging (IM) service to seamlessly incorporate digital signatures and encryption. For more information, visit the corporate website at www.kranos.com