| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 15, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
E-Mail That Won't Come Back to Haunt You New programs allow users to erase the electronic trail John Blumenthal was disappointed with the Japanese team that was helping him encrypt and secure electronic transactions for a Tokyo bank in 1996. So he groused to his American partner via e-mail. Out of mischief or lack of sleep, his partner forwarded the note to the Japanese and copied the author. Two weeks later, when Blumenthal flew to Tokyo, the reception was less than cordial. ''I wasn't exactly treated to a night on the Ginza,'' he recalls. Unlike other victims of errant e-mail, however, Blumenthal could do something about it. During the 14-hour flight to Tokyo, he batted out a program in the Java programming language that lets an e-mail sender set an expiration date on an encrypted message. At the same time, he mapped out a way to block the recipient from pasting, printing, or forwarding the message. Today, Blumenthal heads QVtech Inc., a Colorado Springs (Colo.) startup that's taking this technology to the market. Called Interosa, the package is scheduled for release in December. It's one of the first in a wave of programs that could change the way corporations use electronic mail. ''There's a whole new world emerging where e-mail will follow the sender's rules,'' says Alan Weintraub, a research director at Gartner Group Inc. HUGE POTENTIAL. How? Think of Interosa as a virtual paper shredder. For consumers, it's a chance to make Net conversations private and ephemeral, like phone chat. For companies, it means less worrying about confidential e-mail falling into the hands of competitors, government regulators, or--worse still--the press. Interosa doesn't solve the problem entirely. A determined spy or retentive recipient can always photograph a note or go low-tech and jot it down. But Interosa makes interception more difficult and protects against the purely innocent forwarding accident. With the global business community generating more than a trillion e-mails a year, ''the potential market for such software is absolutely huge,'' says Giga Information Group analyst Jonathan Penn. QVtech won't have the field to itself. An e-mail service from ZipLip.com Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., already lets customers post messages that are erased automatically 24 hours after being opened. Disappearing Inc., a San Francisco startup, is also testing the digital equivalent of disappearing ink. Each company takes a slightly different tack. With QVtech's Interosa, the sender clicks on a menu to encrypt the message and entwine it with policies about how, when and where it can be opened. The recipient unlocks the message with a key that meshes with those policies. Disappearing Inc.'s customers, in contrast, install software that can read specially encrypted messages. Once the e-mail expires, it can never again be decrypted. The software will cost less than $5 per user, and is currently undergoing tests with select customers, including Net equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc. Says Juniper Chief Information Officer John Y. Jendricks: ''This promises new rules to ensure free-flowing conversation.'' LEGAL AID. The benefits to business are instantly obvious. First, e-mailed material that is difficult to cut, copy, or paste is less likely to be stolen, forwarded, or plastered all over someone else's Web site. With Interosa, for example, two parties could negotiate online without fear that the electronic trail will later trip them up. ''Now, e-mail goes into the record for eternity,'' says Robin D. Green, vice-president of e-mail outsourcer MessageMedia Inc., which is field-testing Interosa. ''With QVtech, customers get a service that approximates the temporal nature of a phone call.'' Perhaps most important, e-mail that self-destructs is less likely to end up as ammunition in a lawsuit. When companies today have broad, uniform shredding policies in place, courts rarely punish them for failing to produce paper documents. Along the same lines, says Michael R. Overly, an information-technology attorney in Los Angeles, ''judges will probably go easy on companies with uniform e-mail expiration policies.'' Encryption experts are a bit skeptical. One problem: Users may have to place an unreasonable amount of trust in companies managing encryption keys. But once out of the bottle, some version of an electronic-mail shredder will catch on. In a country that counts on private conversations offline, Citizens on the Net will hardly put up with less. By Neil Gross in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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