12/05/2005

MessageLabs, a provider of messaging security and management services to businesses, and Fortiva, a provider of secure, managed email archiving services, today announced a strategic partnership to address the growing need for secure, hosted email archiving services for legal discovery, regulatory compliance and email storage management.

The following details were provided:

Under the terms of the agreement, MessageLabs will incorporate Fortiva’s managed email archiving technology into its portfolio of managed security services, expanding the company’s offerings to address the growing requirements for email archiving and regulatory compliance. MessageLabs is now both a technology partner and investor in Fortiva.

“Creating a secure, easy to use email archive is a high priority for more and more companies. However, managing the storage and security internally brings with it a significant and escalating resource burden,” said Jos White, president and co-founder, MessageLabs. “MessageLabs chose Fortiva because of the company’s leading-edge security for managed archiving allowing us to provide businesses with end-to-end certainty and management for all of their email needs.”

Fortiva’s managed archiving technology helps businesses create, implement and enforce a policy for email archiving and retention to protect from legal liabilities and regulatory risks, while improving email storage management. As an outsourced solution, Fortiva provides fast and easy set-up and management, scalability, low overhead costs, and full technical support. Uniquely, Fortiva offers all these benefits while guaranteeing the privacy of archived data. Using DoubleBlind Encryption™ technology, every email is encrypted before it leaves the customer network and is stored permanently in its encrypted form, ensuring that data can never be viewed by anyone outside the customer’s network (not even Fortiva’s staff). The customer retains exclusive access to the encryption keys, allowing them to instantly search and retrieve archived data without worrying about managing the storage infrastructure.

“We are pleased to be partnering with the leading messaging services provider in MessageLabs to bring Fortiva’s secure email archiving solution to an even broader audience,” said Paul Chen, CEO of Fortiva. “We see this as a meeting of two companies with similar goals – that is, to bring the benefits of outsourced messaging services to customers without the worries of data security or privacy.”

According to industry analyst group, Radicati, the email archiving segment is predicted to continue to grow significantly over the next three years, with total vendor revenues expected to reach $4.4 billion by the end of 2009. This growth is being driven by regulatory compliance legislation, an increasing emphasis on establishing sound corporate governance principals, and the growing use of email as evidence during legal discovery.

MessageLabs Archiving Service is currently in beta testing with clients and will be launching in the first quarter of 2006.

MessageLabs provides a range of ‘in the cloud’ services for email, web and instant messaging to protect organizations from threats like viruses and spam, ensure policy enforcement and provide complete confidentiality through encryption. The managed service approach allows organizations to manage their messaging without the hassle, inconvenience or additional cost of traditional software or hardware solutions. These services ensure the integrity of electronic communications, helping businesses to manage and reduce risk while securing their critical infrastructure and business information.