By Matthew Fordahl
AP Technology Writer Monday, August 19, 2002; 3:20 PM
SAN JOSE, Calif. –– PGP Corp., a newly formed company specializing in message and data storage security, said Monday it has acquired Network Associates Inc.'s "Pretty Good Privacy" encryption product lines and plans to update the technology.
Pretty Good Privacy, which was first released in 1991 as free software by programmer Phil Zimmermann, is commonly used to scramble e-mail messages to ensure contents are not read while in transit. Network Associates acquired the commercial rights in 1997.
But Network Associates stopped selling its PGP products last year after corporate sales did not meet expectations and the company decided to focus on its core computer security products.
Under the agreement announced Monday, PGP Corp. bought the following products: PGP Mail, PGP File, PGP Disk and PGP Admin software products for Windows-based computers, PGP Corporate Desktop for Macintosh, PGP Keyserver for Windows and Solaris, PGP Mobile for handheld operating systems and the PGP SDK software development kit.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Network Associates retained some products built with PGPsdk, including the McAfee E-Business Server, McAfee Desktop Firewall and McAfee VPN Client.
Terms of the deal, which was finalized July 26, were not disclosed.
Palo Alto-based PGP Corp., which was formed by computer security experts in June, also announced Monday that it received $14 million in venture funding from DCM-Doll Capital Management and Venrock Associates. Zimmermann will serve on the company's technology advisory board.
The company also said it will ship new PGP products for Windows- and Mac OS-based computers in November. PGP 8.0 will support Windows XP and Macintosh OS X, the latest versions of the operating systems.
In addition, PGP Corp. said it will continue to offer free software for personal use. The source code for PGP 8.0 also will be released to open source developers in November.
