Omniva\'s E-Mail \'Shredder\' Offers New Level of Security

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [Didn't these guys present something at a BA CP meeting last year?] September 6, 2001 Under the Radar Omniva's E-Mail 'Shredder' Offers New Level of Security By ELLEN BYRON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Imagine e-mail that can self-destruct after a certain amount of time, leaving no trace in in-boxes and servers. Omniva Policy Systems has created software that can do just that. Michael Burkland The San Francisco-based firm, founded in 1999 as Disappearing Inc., has taken on the loophole left by the deletion key: Even though an e-mail has been deleted, it still lurks within the servers of the sender and recipients. What Omniva (www.omniva.com1) aims to do is help companies establish retention policies for e-mail, much like those typically in place for paper documents, by offering the e-mail equivalent of a paper shredder. After spending nearly two years on research and development, the company released the first version of its software in July. E-mail "is a huge gateway -- electronic assets are constantly flowing in and out of a company," says Chief Executive Michael Burkland. "We're giving companies control." Here's how it works. The software installs a second send button on the user's e-mail program, titled "Send With Policy." When a customer selects the button, Omniva's technology encrypts the e-mail into an unreadable state before it is sent, and allows the sender to specify a detonation time of anywhere between 30 minutes or even years after the e-mail is dispatched. Only a specific and unique key from Omniva's server can make the e-mail readable. Once the message reaches its destination, the recipient's e-mail program requests the key from Omniva's server to decode the message. When the detonation time is reached, that key is voided, making all copies of the e-mail permanently unreadable, including forwarded copies. Corporate customers can customize the software to fit their document-retention policies. Firms may determine the level of control employees have in specifying e-mail expiration dates and what types of e-mail are retained. E-mails detailing lunch menus, for example, could have one expiration date, while communication regarding clients can have another. Likewise, departments and levels of management can also have respective retention policies set by the company. Though only Microsoft Outlook users can send the disappearing e-mail, any e-mail program can receive it, including the Blackberry hand-held device. Omniva is currently in collaboration with Ernst & Young LLP to develop a Lotus Notes version of the technology, due out later this year. Although a trial version of the current software can be downloaded free from the company's Web site, the company aims to customize the product for corporate customers. A one-year corporate subscription starts at $70,000. Omniva changed its name in July, saying it wanted to convey its software does more than just make e-mail disappear. Part of its broader focus is on electronic-document maintenance, which came about as the company became aware of an increasing amount of litigation involving recovered e-mail. Think Bill Gates in Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's courtroom. "Writing is permanent, compared to speech, so we were trying to find something that is between the two," the company's co-founder, Dave Marvit, says. "We're empowering people to have conversations that go away." Mr. Marvit, who had been at Alexa Inc., a San Francisco-based Internet archivist and Web-navigation service provider that is part of Amazon.com Inc., joined with his brother, Maclen Marvit, and two friends, Keith Rosema and Jeff Ubois, to found the company in 1999. Mr. Marvit now serves as a company spokesman, and his brother sits on its board. Mr. Burkland joined the company in September 2000; he is founder and former CEO of Eventus Software Inc., which is now part of Segue Software Inc. Since its founding, Omniva has raised $20 million, with the bulk of that coming from funds raised in February of this year. Its backers include venture-capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Menlo Park, Calif.; Red Rock Ventures, Palo Alto, Calif.; Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, New York, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., New York. The company, which has 30 employees, has no paying customers at this point; it says it is negotiating with two companies and several firms are testing the s! oftware. E-mail security that acts like a shredder, that is, software that enables e-mail to expire, is still a small industry, says Maurene Grey, senior research analyst at Gartner Group. Other players in the industry include Authentica Inc., Waltham, Mass.; Atabok Inc., Newton, Mass.; and Privacy Preserve Inc., Greenville, Del. She cautions that e-mail shredding is less defined by the courts than archiving and could be a liability should courts deem the action to be intentionally destroying company records. Between 85% and 90% of litigants routinely ask for e-mail records, up from about 1% to 3% in 1994, according to Joan Feldman, president and founder of Computer Forensics Inc., a Seattle company that provides assistance to attorneys acquiring and analyzing computer-based evidence and advises clients on developing privacy policies and retention-control programs for computer-based documents. Ms. Feldman says a growing number of companies see the need for e-mail retention policies, mainly due to costs involved in litigation and the risk associated with retaining everything. A company involved in a legal case could spend between $5,000 and $10,000 for electronic-recovery specialists to review just one day's worth of e-mail, she estimates. "The more documents you have, the greater the expense and the greater the odds that you have held on to something that could hurt you in your litigation," she says. But who sees those documents also matters. That's why Omniva is working to update its software so that managers can determine who can read an e-mail once it is sent. Write to Ellen Byron at ellen.byron@wsj.com2 - - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB999724513558552891.djm Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) http://www.omniva.com/ (2) mailto:ellen.byron@wsj.com - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Hush 2.0 wl8EARECAB8FAjuXyNYYHG1lYW4tZ3JlZW5AaHVzaG1haWwuY29tAAoJEE4JZ6opvpNq tLUAni7ArgjQUCpsW/2XPOv4kTPIoEDdAJ0d2NQVaBjsbZnSNsVVKbmzhq7TJg== =Ld95 - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Hush 2.0 wl8EARECAB8FAjuXyOEYHG1lYW4tZ3JlZW5AaHVzaG1haWwuY29tAAoJEE4JZ6opvpNq iZEAnRrVNCzeOWUCCYs0TFNMrvNCzu5/AKC56KtGShAvSIuo5LzVpAA5AfDBzw== =wXvI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----