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PGP Acquired From NAI

Posted by jamie on from the old-standards dept.

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.

8 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mac OS X by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You will! Read the announcement.

  2. Check GnuPG, an excellent alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative


    http://www.gnupg.org/

  3. Re:Mac OS X by jht · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep, we will. They've announced that PGP 8.0 for OS X will be available within a couple of months, and it's fully Cocoa based. It'll include plug-ins for Apple Mail and Entourage, and it'll have a version of PGP Disk that'll work with older images and run in OS X.

    There's also going to be new Personal versions of all the apps, as well. PGP Net will be a separate application under OS X, rather than being bundled in the base product. The Windows PGP VPN product will continue to be sold by NAI.

    (Of course, had they posted this when I submitted it 3 hours ago, you would have known this already...)

    --
    -- Josh Turiel
    "2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
  4. Re:who funded it by Majin+Bubu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check http://www.pgp.com/display.php?pageID=51#anch23
    T he new company has Zimmermann and Schneier in the technical board of advisors. One can hope.

    --
    Ander

    @=

  5. Re:Actually... by FreeLinux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The home user market is really quite small by comparison to the corporate market. Think about it, how many AOL users have a clue what PGP is, much less a desire to use it.

    Since this is a small market anyway, they lose little or nothing by giving it away to this market segment. But, by giving it away, they have a greater potential to increase their mind share and their installed base. They also increase compatibility in the sense that corporations can communicate with private citizens via PGP, something that can not happen if the general public doesn't have a means of decrypting the communications.

    The model is similar to many others who have been highly successful with it. Think about Real Networks, Adobe, Macromedia and even the venerable web browser Netscape and IE. They give the client away and sell the server.

    Now, later on after they have established themselves as the monopoly for the communications encryption market, they can start charging the small users too because at that point those users will have to have it.

    In the end, very profitable indeed.

  6. Isn't that a bit deceptive? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    GnuPG is intended to replace the PGP encryption program, not the entire PGP product line. Of course, there are Free Software replacements for those other products as well:
    • Encrypted filesystem: GPL driver for Linux
    • Firewall: Linux Router Project and others.
    • IDS: Snort and its ilk.
    • IPSEC tunneling VPN: I think this is in Free S/WAN.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  7. Re:Command line version? by Llanfairpwllgwyngyll · · Score: 5, Informative

    The PGP 7.x command line tools were removed because of the ease with which you could hack together a server using the command line tools without paying for a PGP Server-stylee licence which cost a lot more. The E-biz stuff still gave you the command line versions - but that was more expensive.

  8. Now is the time. by mesozoic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always lamented PGP's de-evolution from a robust security tool to an antiquated piece of crap. Network Associates certainly has not spent due time in maintaining and improving PGP, and to their own loss. Now that businesses are paying serious attention to network security, it's the ideal market for a company like PGP Corporation.