E-Communications & Community

The secure messaging space is the umbrella term for two subset markets: email encryption (i.e., of the message and/or transport of the message) and secure email filtering (e.g., for inappropriate content, spam and viruses). Many of the secure email filtering vendors were born from point-product, spam-filtering vendors -- such was the case with CipherTrust.

As niche markets approach maturity, acquisitions follow.

The secure email filtering vendors are being acquired into one of two markets: Unified Threat Management (UTM) or Message Management.

Secure Computing identifies itself as an UTM company. CipherTrust technologies will strengthen their existing email toolsets. Over time, the likelihood is that the CipherTrust branding disappears.

In a similar move, UTM provider SonicWall acquired secure email filtering vendor MailFrontier.

On the other hand, Symantec, a core security vendor, moved in the message management space through their acquisitions of BrightMail, IMLogic, and Veritas/KVS . Along with their own email anti-virus technologies, the acquisitions comprise Symantec's Message Management platform.

The existing secure messaging market is in the early stages of fracturing and regrouping under a Unified Threat Management security offering or a Messaging Management offering.

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Views from the financial end...
ThreatChaos "Secure Computing announced that they were buying Ciphertrust. But when you look at the deal you begin to wonder."
Security Incite "Boy, Secure Computing is taking a pounding today. Stock is way down and a couple of vociferous Wall Street analysts are really beating them up."