Kiteworks Acquisition of Leading Email Encryption Gateway Company totemo Bolsters Kiteworks Content Communications Protection, Compliance, and Governance
All of us at Kiteworks are excited about today’s important announcement: our acquisition of totemo, a leader in email encryption gateway technology, and the coming integration of its market-leading capabilities into the Kiteworks platform. It is a big step forward in the development of our platform and the growth of our company.
Flexible and Effective Email Encryption
totemo’s FIPS (140-2)-validated email encryption gateway technology can be used with any email client, ensuring automated encryption coverage for all email communications. For users, the experience is seamless and transparent. Emails and their attachments are encrypted and decrypted using native functionality in mail clients like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird according to predefined security rules.
There are a lot of features in the totemo technology that make it especially compelling. First, totemo enables seamless communication, even when senders and recipients use different encryption standards—including S/MIME, TLS, and OpenPGP. When an email is sent or received, totemo first checks to see if there is a user file available to discern the encryption standard in use by the recipient. If not, an email is automatically sent to the recipient to initiate a registration process, which authenticates the recipient. The software remembers which encryption standard maps to each external organization and email address, and it uses that standard for all outgoing mail to those recipients. This eliminates the need to manually request or share a public key to communicate with people outside the organization—while maintaining the security of content communications.
Second, totemo automatically integrates virus scanning for inbound email as well as enables organizations to integrate data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities for outbound email. This is accomplished by decrypting messages at the gateway and re-encrypting them before they arrive at an internal or external mailbox. This enables organizations to protect against cyberattacks, while ensuring compliance with regulations and standards around content security.
Third, totemo’s internationally patented technology is unique in that it does not require the installation of plugins or additional software components. In fact, the entire solution can be deployed in a matter of days in most cases. totemo can be easily, quickly, and efficiently integrated into any email infrastructure and connected to existing public key infrastructure (PKI) systems, certification authorities, and directory services. And as with Kiteworks, feature updates occur automatically.
Automated Email Encryption Benefits Kiteworks Customers
Kiteworks customers now have an additional solution for secure email communications. They already have access to Kiteworks’ secure email, which features the highest level of encryption standards (AES-256 at rest, TLS-1.2 in transit). Now, they can purchase totemo’s email encryption gateway that scales to hundreds of thousands of mailboxes and supports a wide range of encryption standards and automatic conversion across those encryption standards. And like Kiteworks secure email, it supports the exchange of very large files.
The above brings numerous benefits for an organization. The fact that email encryption is seamless and automated—without the need for plugins—improves operational efficiency for both the IT team and users. In addition, centralizing external content sharing in the email system means that a company’s email archiving solution can be a single source of truth for documents that have been shared. This, in turn, eliminates the need to correlate data from different sources. Operational efficiencies will also compound once totemo’s technology is integrated into the Kiteworks platform, lowering licensing costs, simplifying the procurement process, and reducing the complexity and cost of employee training.
More importantly, totemo can improve an organization’s risk profile by ensure that all content shared with third parties is encrypted. The native automation of encryption in the email client and the ability to accommodate very large files mitigates the risk that users will resort to using consumer-grade file sharing services or web-based email browsers to share content.
A Secure Content Communications Platform Benefits totemo Customers
totemo customers join other organizations around the world that rely on Kiteworks for the highest levels of content communications governance, compliance, and security. This acquisition gives them the opportunity to improve their secure email strategy with additional controls and tracking, which streamlines auditing processes and the ability to meet regulatory requirements.
They can also unify their sensitive content communications by tapping into the comprehensive capabilities of the Kiteworks platform to unify governance, compliance, and security across all third-party communication channels, including email, file sharing, file transfers and automation, automated application programming interface (APIs), and web forms. This enables them to improve tracking, controls, and protection across the entire content communications attack surface.
totemo customers can also realize operational efficiencies from a consolidated platform for secure content communications. A unified platform reduces IT administration costs and simplifies procurement. Additionally, it improves employee productivity, as they need less training than they would with a host of unconnected point products.
The Kiteworks platform unifies secure content communication channels, tracks what happens to sensitive content, provides controls that help companies comply with external regulations and internal policies, and secures content against exposure to malicious actors. These efforts help organizations mitigate risk and provide peace of mind that their sensitive content is protected.
Acquisition Offers a Unique Combination of Content Communications Capabilities
This acquisition will have a significant impact on the business of governance, compliance, and security. The combination of technologies from two industry leaders in content communications provides customers with comprehensive tracking and controls for the sensitive information they share internally and externally. The synergy between the two companies’ product offerings strengthens Kiteworks’ ability to empower customers to manage risk and meet regulatory requirements across their sensitive content communications infrastructure.
totemo strengthens the Kiteworks platform by adding enterprise-ready, end-to-end encryption, and automatic conversion across a wide range of encryption standards. No other vendor offers this combination of capabilities—in addition to the resulting business benefits such as compliance, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency.
Takeaways: Comprehensive Tracking and Controls for Sensitive Email Content Communications at a Crucial Time
This acquisition comes at a critical point, when sensitive content like personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and intellectual property is targeted more than ever before. Criminal syndicates and nation-states seek to exfiltrate such information for ransom, fraud, competitive advantage, and other nefarious purposes.
The takeaway is that organizations must do more to protect their sensitive information. CIOs, CISOs, and risk and compliance officers face increasing pressure to secure sensitive content and demonstrate regulatory compliance while removing friction from the processes employees use in their everyday work. They must protect content at rest, in motion, and in use. And besides email, they need to protect content during file transfers and file sharing, within APIs, and on web forms. Integration of totemo’s email encryption gateway technology into the Kiteworks platform will deliver the most comprehensive private content communications governance, compliance, and risk protection in the global market.
As totemo’s technology is integrated into the Kiteworks platform in coming months, email content metadata on users, apps, devices, networks, protocols, and files will be centrally ingested and normalized. This unified intelligence will enable organizations to implement centralized and comprehensive tracking and controls to greatly reduce the risk of exposure of private information and more effectively meet regulatory compliance requirements. Enterprises that leverage this integrated intelligence will expand and improve their overall cyber-defense strategy—expanding privacy protection and compliance beyond data center, cloud, and wide-area network (WAN) perimeters into third-party sensitive content communications.
Organizations interested in understanding how they can benefit from the integration of totemo email encryption technology into the Kiteworks platform can schedule time for a custom-tailored demo today.