Hush offers novel twist on secure e-mail

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2586300,00.html

By Dennis Fisher, eWEEK
June 12, 2000 1:08 PM PT

Hush Communications USA Inc. today released HushPOP, its latest secure
e-mail product.

HushPOP, which can be downloaded for free from the company's Web site,
is a transparent add-on that runs behind a user's desktop e-mail
client and takes a unique approach to encrypted e-mail.

Like many other secure messaging programs, HushPOP uses an encryption
engine to generate unique keys for each user. However, HushPOP keys
are generated on each user's local machine. Once a user logs into the
program with a private pass-phrase, he or she can send and receive
secure e-mails just like any other message.

Once a message is generated, it is sent to HushPOP's key server and
then on to the recipient, who doesn't have to have HushPOP installed.
Messages are encrypted with 1,024-bit security.

"This is as secure as it gets," said Jon Gilliam, president of Hush
Communications in Austin, Texas. "We don't have access to the users'
keys, and the encryption level is well beyond what's out there now."

Much of the development work on HushPOP was done in Ireland as a
result of U.S. laws prohibiting export of powerful encryption
software. The company has had a secure Webmail product, Hushmail.com,
available for several months, and it released a private-label product
for service providers on June 1.

Overcoming the 'hurdle rate'

Hush's technology has analysts excited about the company's prospects.

"The things that they're proposing are much more exciting than what
we've seen in the marketplace to date," said Joyce Graff, vice
president and research director at The Gartner Group in Stamford,
Conn.

"At the moment, the hurdle rate is pretty high, because people have to
think ahead in order to use secure e-mail. Unless you can do it at the
last minute without having to set it up, people won't use it.
[HushPOP] does that. You don't want to be seen as a company that's
hard to do business with."

Hush intends to apply its encryption technology to an increasingly
broad range of products in the near future, Gilliam said.

"Our technology works with all forms of digital communication --
instant messaging, IP telephony, whatever," said Gilliam, who added
that an encrypted IM client is a strong possibility.

Hush is at www.hushmail.com


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"Communications without intelligence is noise;
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