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PGP Security 10 years old, clears some doubts

PGP Security clears the smoke regarding OpenPGP Alliance membership, development of the CyberCop Monitor IDS product, all while celebrating its 10th birthday.
Written by Samuel Quek, Contributor

The idea behind Pretty Good Privacy is to ensure that your data is secure, but one wonders if all the cloak-and-dagger can sometimes be somewhat confusing.

PGP Security clears the smoke regarding OpenPGP Alliance membership, development of the CyberCop Monitor IDS product, all while celebrating its 10th birthday.

SINGAPORE - PGP Security makes its business keeping data and communications secure, making sure that unauthorized persons won't be able to access sensitive information.

And it's been doing that for 10 years.

So it came to many as a surprise when it was reported a few weeks ago that the company, a division of Network Associates, wasn't a member of the newly formed OpenPGP Alliance. The Alliance was created in an effort to let email security vendors let their products work with one another. The Alliance's founder, Phil Zimmerman, was also the creator of the original Pretty Good Privacy program though the trademark to PGP and the copyright on the source code belongs to Network Associates.

The confusion comes in the midst of PGP Security celebrating the tenth anniversary of PGP this June, it being one of the earliest encryption products available in the market.

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Sandra England, president of PGP Security, helped to clarify the situation when she was in Singapore earlier this week, together with George Samenuk, CEO of Network Associates.

"We are a member," said England. "OpenPGP has been a standard for some time, and it is definitely in our best interests to support it."

England claimed the miscommunication occurred because the people who were able to respond to the invitation were out-stationed during that time.

England was also on hand to wave away concerns that the company was moving away from the intrusion detection system (IDS) market.

"We have not walked away from the IDS market by any far stretch of the imagination," she said, although she did confirm that further development for PGP Security's CyberCop Monitor IDS product was coming to a halt, though support for it would continue to be available for the next few years.

The reason behind the decision was based on the belief the product wasn't doing as well as it could have.

England conceded that the IDS product was "admittedly behind the market", and said that the company was looking for new technology to acquire or deploy quickly.

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