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.

Awesome

[sllort]

The question is, how long until the XP version of PGP is released? PGP has been my "killer app" for sticking with Win2k - how can you own a notebook computer without an encrypted filesystem?

Hey, maybe they'll put out a Linux desktop integrated version as well, though who knows which Window Manager they'd pick.

Re:Cool. But it only benefits....

[sllort]

it only benefits...the corporate/home MS windows user's really.

So basically PGP only benefits 90% of the Marketplace? As far as being clueful goes, I consider myself to have a clue, and I use PGP instead of GPG because of the extra functionality - seamless integration with email clients, built in firewall, built in IDS, and an encrypted filesystem that integrates seamlessly into the filesystem. How exactly can you secure applications with files spread all over the hard drive (like your Internet Explorer cache) without a feature like that?

Maybe they're just clued in to different clues than you, man.

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think it's great to be able to download their free non-commercial version but I do think it's a bad business-model.

Think about it, how much value is there for corporations in a product like PGP? HUGE!

How much value is there for homeusers that wants to protect their data, also quite big!

How much do people pay for cable, internet and other stuff each month. Quite some money, right? Wouldn't a product they often use on a daily bases be worth anything?

For them, I don't think it's wise to give away the product to home users since it has value to them too.

I think this is the IT-industries problem in a nutshell, people working in it always think their products isn't worth anything then in fact people do pay lots of money for even small insignificant stuff in their life.

I'VE GOT AN INFLAMED ANUS.WHO SLIPPED ME A ROOFIE?

[Subject Line Troll]

Re:Actually...

[FreeLinux]

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.

Re:Check GnuPG, an excellent alternative

[ftobin]

As always, if PGP had come with an mp3 player, people would complain about GnuPG not having one also. PGP-the-suite is primarily a morass of fairly unrelated products, bundled together merely for markettng reasons, which you have obviously fallen for...

Now is the time.

[mesozoic]

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.

Getting my key signed?

[yerricde]

The PGP standard has a specific social problem not specific to PGP brand products:

How does a fellow who travels very little enter the worldwide PGP Web of Trust? Getting a key signed requires a tamper-proof channel not subject to obvious man-in-the-middle attacks, and the only such channel I know of is face-to-face contact. Because I do not travel much[1], I have a very hard time extending my part of the web of trust beyond my hometown.

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[1] I can't own an automobile because my full-time college education [rose-hulman.edu] precludes me from having a job [mcdonalds.com] to pay for insurance [geico.com], and besides that, I'm not sure I'm even capable of learning to drive a car.