Brandmail Wins BT Deal
Uk.biz.yahoo.com January 19, 2007
Brandmail's software will be offered as a new free service for BT (LSE: BT-A.L - news )customers, called BT Secure Mail. It will be available across all of BT Ireland's web mail clients, which include oceanfree.net and iol.ie.
Secure System
The Brandmailandnbsp;solution is designed to ensure that only genuine e-mails from legitimate senders are delivered to the end-user. The e-mails delivered by the Brandmail system are visually distinctive in the inbox by including the sender's brand logo along with a secure icon.
Every message that is sent through the Brandmail service is scanned and embedded with a cryptographically secure token. These tokens are detected by BT Ireland, identified and verified, before the message is delivered to the recipient's inbox as a legitimate and secure message. The email is clearly labelled with both a secure icon and the email sender's logo, making it simple for users to see, at a glance, as to who the e-mail is from and whether it is safe to open. In addition, fake emails, purporting to be from certified senders, are stopped before ever reaching the end user's inbox.
Separately and also in conjunction with BT Ireland, Brandmail Solutions certifies all of its e-mail senders and works with these partners to maintain neutral compliance controls before enrolment into their programme. Best practice e-mail behaviour must be adhered to, and non-compliant brands will be suspended from the programme. The end result for BT Ireland web mail users ought to be a safer email experience. In addition to e-mail security, the benefit for certified e-mail senders is that their brand is displayed in the inbox list view, thereby increasing brand equity.
Commenting on the deal, BT Ireland product director Peter Evans said: BT Ireland is the first internet service provider, not only in Ireland ( IREL.OB - news ) but in Europe, to launch Brandmail Solutions' proactive service to thwart phishing and e-mail scams. Our research has consistently shown that safety and security online are among the biggest concerns for customers and today we are addressing those concerns by providing a value add security service for free.andrdquo;
Funding
The deal is the most significant contract won by Brandmail since it raised andeuro;1.25m in a first round of funding last year led by Dublin auditing and taxation firm Cooney Carey. Managing director Noel Ruane said his product enabledandnbsp;e-mail users to have an independent mechanism in place to ensure that they are not spammed and can unsubscribe from email programmes under the scrutiny of a third-party. E-mail is the number one online activity. It is an invaluable part of our everyday lives, but unfortunately there are drawbacks and we believe that Brandmail Solutions can optimise the benefits and eliminate the bad and ugly, he said.
Launch
BT Ireland expects to roll out its BT Secure Mail service in early 2007, complete with a list of participating e-mail senders. On roll out, customers who wish to receive branded and secure emails from email senders they trust and want to correspond with should visit www.btireland.ie for more information.
