Network Associates Gives Up Search for PGP Buyer

nakhla writes: "I came across this article which states that Network Associates has given up the search for a buyer for its PGP division. The company has laid off 18 workers, and plans to continue to maintain the product for one year. It's a good thing that there are still products like GnuPG and others out there for people who need cheap, reliable encryption."

Comments

The real pity of this

[jht]

PGP Desktop is a well-integrated application that has a nice file protection app (PGP disk), makes PGP signing your mail a lot easier (it integrates to most e-mail clients I've used), has a good IPSec VPN component, and runs on Mac and Windows (1 more platform than most products do, though there's no Linux desktop version). NAI never did a very good job of selling the product, though - it was always one of those "semi-orphan" packages. NAI couldn't figure out if it was meant to be a business package or a home use package, and pricing was never set in stone.

Ironically, it's probably an easier sell now than it's ever been, given that organizations are finally getting a little more security-conscious.

GPG is probably the best hope for a cross-platform replacement, but there's still a need for better snazzy front-ends on most platforms (I'm using it on MacOS X) to help Joe Average, and there's no easy PGP VPN or PGP Disk equivalent.

NAI - if anyone's listening, why not re-open the PGP codebase and let the marketplace solve the problem? Nobody wants to buy it, you don't want to sell it, so give it away!