If your company sends e-mail that contains confidential information, or that you’d like to lock down so that it can only be read by an authenticated recipient on the other end, or which you’d simply like to be able to authenticate as really coming from you rather than some great pretender, then has Aunty got a deal for you.

Developed by a company that Aunty just discovered, Kinar, the KeepSafe e-mail program, does all of this and more.

Aunty likes to think of it as what you would end up with if you crossed PGP with Domain Keys and certification, without any of the hassles or pitfalls of any of them.

It works like this:

You install the e-mail widget on your side. This widget works with any e-mail package your users may use, and also integrates directly into Outlook and Outlook Express.

When your user sends e-mail to someone, that e-mail contains a personal identification key unique to your user, and on the way to the recipient it notes who the recipient is. Upon receipt, the user’s own unique personal identification key is required for him to read it. So the e-mail is authenticated as to sender - the recipient knows that it was really your user who sent it, and your user knows that it is really the intended recipient who has received and read it. If the recipient doesn’t already have his own unique pass key, then the e-mail will display a URL for him to click (this only has to be done once, ever) and he will get his own unique personal identification, which is free, and will work with any future KeepSafe mail he may receive.

The implications for this in the corporate world are tremendous, as documents that need to be kept confidential can be sent wrapped in this secure e-mail, kept safe from… [Continued]