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Security firm Global Web Security Systems, or gWebs, announced the release of its MailCloak SMB and MailCloak Pro e-mail encryption products, protecting individual e-mail messages by using open-source algorithms to scramble message, attachment and draft content.
MailCloak SMB (small to medium-size business) brings e-mail encryption and regulatory compliance to users of Google Apps and Microsoft Windows Live Admin Center corporate e-mail services. In addition, it encrypts Gmail, Yahoo Mail, MSN Live Mail and seven Chinese Web mail services.
The company claims countries and e-mail service providers have stepped up their Internet censorship and eavesdropping, resulting in billions of e-mails that may be getting eavesdropped upon unknowingly. gWebs says Web-based e-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo and MSN Live Mail are also indexed and searchable, both by users themselves and by service providers.
Google’s struggles continue in places like China: All results referencing Tiananmen Square on Google.cn were blocked in the days leading up to the anniversary this June. China ranks among the most heavily censorious nations regarding the Internet, according to the Reporters Without Borders Internet censorship ratings.
However, there are a number of resources that allow users to bypass the technical aspects of Internet censorship. Proxy Websites are often the simplest and fastest way to access banned Websites in censored nations, while virtual private networks (VPNs) and software programs can also allow users to bypass Internet censorship. gWeb focuses on encryption.
“With MailCloak’s strong 4,096-bit encryption, users can store encryption keys on their own computers, or take their public and private keys with them on USB thumb drives,” said company CEO Jason Zhao. “This gives organizations and end users complete control over the security of their messages.”
MailCloak uses an open-source implementation of the OpenPGP encryption standard combined with proprietary Webmail encapsulation technology. MailCloak offers open-source, open-standard encryption with GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), a Mozilla Firefox add-on, a Microsoft Internet Explorer add-on, support for all POP3/SMTP Microsoft Windows e-mail clients and an automated key exchange and access to Cryptobot key exchange.
Zhao said MailCloak has added support for the tens of thousands of organizations that use their own domain names on Google and Microsoft corporate e-mail systems. “More and more organizations and end users are using Web-based e-mail systems, but traditional encryption didn’t work on them, so the industry had to play catch-up,” he said. “MailCloak is really the only solution out there for hundreds of millions of Webmail users.”