PGP Acquired From NAI

lowy writes "PGP Corporation, the 'new company with a long history' today announced that it has received $14 Million in funding and acquired the PGP Desktop and Wireless encryption product lines from Network Associates, Inc." PGP Corporation issued five press releases today, but we'll forgive it because it actually has products to sell, promises to keep offering a freeware version, and is taking on tech support for existing customers. Also, the email from NAI to its customers follows.

August 19, 2002

Dear Customer,

Today we are pleased to announce that PGP Corporation, a newly formed, venture-funded security company, has acquired the PGP desktop encryption and wireless product lines from Network Associates. As you know, prior to placing the products into maintenance mode, we were actively looking for a buyer that would continue the development and support of the technology.

Network Associates has retained products developed using PGPsdk including McAfee E-Business Server for encrypted server-to-server file transfer, McAfee Desktop Firewall and McAfee VPN Client. These products will remain a part of Network Associates existing product portfolio and we will continue to develop them to meet your security needs. PGP Corporation has acquired PGPmail, PGPfile, PGPdisk, PGPwireless, PGPadmin and PGPkeyserver encryption software products for Win32 and Macintosh, PGPsdk encryption software development kit, and PGP Corporate Desktop for Macintosh.

In addition to the technology, PGP Corporation has acquired all worldwide customer license agreements and technical support obligations. To ensure a seamless transition, Network Associates will work with PGP Corporation to support PGP customers through October 26, 2002. PGP Corporation will contact you shortly with details on its plans and product direction.

We trust that you will have continued success with the PGP desktop and wireless encryption products through PGP Corporation. Network Associates appreciates your business and we value our continued relationship across our remaining product lines.

Comments

Re:Isn't that a bit deceptive?

[sllort]

Isn't that a bit deceptive?

Bruce, it certainly wasn't my intention to deceive anyone.

Encrypted filesystem: GPL driver for Linux
Honest ignorance; I didn't know this existed. I'd like to make sure it's "on par" with PGP's implementation before considering it a workalike. The most important feature being seamless integration into the Windows O/S and filesystem. If the aforementioned software isn't available for Windows, then it's not a "full replacement". Additionally, PGP offers a choice of conventional encryption algorithms up to some rather large keysizes, and the ability to do useful paranoia-related things like never keep your passphrase in the same part of RAM for more than a few seconds, preventing a powered-down "ghosting" attack. Again, I can't speak to the implementation you speak of, but I'd like a link so I can read over it.

Firewall: Linux Router Project and others.
I'm sure there's probably a good Windows implementation of ipchains with a really nice, easy to use GUI like PGP, I just personally haven't found it. I won't contest this one with you.

IDS: Snort and its ilk.
Again, no contest of the quality of Snort, and no contest on the Windows implementation. Haven't seen it, but I'm sure it exists.

IPSEC tunneling VPN: I think this is in Free S/WAN.
Ok, here I have a bone to pick. Having spent a high quality portion of my irreplaceable youth trying to port this to Windows NT, I must respectfully disagree. PGP provides an IPSec powered LAN (with IKE!) that works under Windows with a GUI configuration tool in no seconds flat. I'm sorry, but you can't call Free S/WAN anything close to a "full replacement".

So again, I respectfully disagree, but wish you luck in fighting the DMCA.

KWTCMA