Sigaba Granted Key Federated Authentication Patent
San Mateo, CA – December 5, 2005 – Sigaba (www.sigaba.com), the global leader in enterprise message management, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company its patent for Federated Authentication, a technology that enables secure communication by facilitating the sharing of identification credentials among multiple disparate entities.
Patent number 6,959,336, awarded to Sigaba on October 25, 2005, grants Sigaba sole right to accept authentication statements from any number of trusted sources and use it to enforce access control policies for secure messaging. The federated authentication technology included in the patent enables global single sign-on, allowing member organizations to manage authentication of their own email communities. The technology also reduces administrative and management costs by reducing the number of email users that an organization must maintain as well as mitigating the ongoing risks of maintaining credentials for subjects that are not part of a given domain.
SigabaNetâ„? offers government agencies complete control over information leaving the enterprise through outbound messaging. Sigaba is the only provider of secure messaging solutions that is able to separate the authentication and encryption mechanisms in its secure architecture. By doing so, the Sigaba solution allows for all security policies and procedures to be handled at the enterprise level, requiring no action on the part of email users, which enables usable federated authentication, secure document delivery, and a comprehensive audit trail of email messages.
“This is the last of the patents required to protect Sigaba’s unique ability to provide simultaneous identity federation among disparate communities of interest and immediate, routine, secure exchange of email and IM across different domains,” said Robert Cook, chairman at Sigaba. “Sigaba is the only company that can offer this fundamental requirement for secure government collaboration and information sharing.”
Earlier patents granted to Sigaba include the secure email system (key server) patent (#6,584,564) and the interactive email statement patent (#6,859,822), providing the separation of authentication and encryption with the use of a key server, such that email and IM are sender owned to facilitate auditing and control.
Sigaba has demonstrated the use of federated authentication in the U.S. Department of Defense and international coalition environments, encrypting email sent via the Internet and allowing each nation to use its own authentication mechanism.
“The enterprise problem that Sigaba has solved is delivering, repeatedly upon demand, an assertion of verified identity or authentication among members of diverse communities of interest. Once that assertion has been produced, verified and delivered, a key can be issued for encryption or some other purpose,” said Sharyn Pensmith, Vice President, Sigaba Public Sector. “This technology is essential for meeting the secure communication needs of both defense and civilian agencies.”
About Sigaba
Sigaba® provides secure information sharing solutions that enable public and private sector entities to exchange confidential information with their partners, customers and constituents. The company’s secure messaging products for secure email, instant messaging, document delivery and mobile devices are built upon a standards-based platform, SigabaNet(tm), which takes the complexity out of strong encryption and enables organizations to easily authenticate users and separately encrypt sensitive data. The result is a unique way to protect the privacy and security of confidential information in order to mitigate compliance risks while strengthening relationships, improving efficiencies and safeguarding intellectual property. Sigaba’s technology is used by businesses and government organizations to secure the world’s most critical information. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Sigaba (s?-g??-ba) takes its name from the SIGABA encryption machine used by the United States during WWII it was the only device of its kind never compromised by the enemy. More information is available at http://www.sigaba.com.