History
Totemo’s leading security solutions handle all aspects of secure messaging, secure managed file transfers, and secure mobile messaging for companies and authorities of all sizes. Our innovative products ensure secure information exchanges via the Internet, and cover the functional areas of secure email, encryption, secure managed file transfers, and data loss prevention (DLP). Totemo’s business success is founded on more than seven years of research and development and two international patents.
From the very start, we have consistently worked closely with our customers to better understand and cater to their security needs. Totemo has contributed to helping companies and authorities in eliminating the numerous obstacles that prevent them from getting the very most out of the Internet and their corporate networks.
Totemo customers do not merely want their security systems to protect them; they collaborate with Totemo because they aim to transform their security-relevant challenges into business opportunities and success on the market. Our security solutions help our customers save time, reduce operating costs, raise productivity, comply more closely with regulatory and legal requirements and to comprehensively protect their brands and most valuable capital – their corporate data.
Totemo’s security solutions are based on the same standard security platform (Totemo Security Platform). It firstly permits simpler and more transparent integration, and secondly, gives our customers the advantage of perfectly synchronized products across the range managed using a standard interface.
This brief overview of our corporate history concentrates mainly on the technologies and products that make us pioneers in the field in giving our customers the greatest possible benefit in handling emails, file transfers, Web interactions and transactions, enabling them to do all this confidentially, reliably and efficiently.
Totemo AG was founded in September 2001 with the main aim of developing a gateway-based email encryption system for securely communicating with absolutely any email recipient, regardless of their infrastructure and applied technologies. From the very beginning, we have focused on largely automated processes, transparent functions, the full support of established industry standards and extremely simple, fast and efficient integration into any existing IT infrastructure.
The first release of our secure messaging gateway, Totemo TrustMail, was rolled out in December 2002. This version already contained highly innovative and trail-blazing features such as central creation and management of keys and certificates for internal users, collection and management of certificates and keys of external exchange partners, issuance of S/MIME certificates for external exchange partners, and a WebMail interface for users without key materials.
Living up to our claim to give our customers maximum efficiency and greatest ease of use with TrustMail, we have developed and implemented a graphic user interface (GUI), the TrustMail Rule Designer, for defining security rules throughout companies. In contrast to previous gateway solutions that required scripts and programming languages to be learned before security rules could be defined and managed, security policies in TrustMail are simply dragged and dropped into place.
Emails are a major element of today’s communication and business processes. Accordingly, the email infrastructure must be available at all times. It is plain that a secure messaging gateway like TrustMail must at least fulfill these criteria. Even more so given the central role being assumed by TrustMail in our customers’ email communication, stability, reliability, performance, error-free functioning and fault tolerance are an absolute must. With this in mind, we have invested a large part of our development budget in doing justice to precisely these requirements at all times.
As part of development of the TrustMail product, further innovative features were added mid-2003. Many larger companies already have their own PKI that they use for various applications such as identity management, single sign-on etc. To ensure that the available key material for internal users can also be used for email encryption, we have extended the integrated key and certificate management in TrustMail with standard interfaces for linking up with external PKIs.
Surely one of the most important milestones in our corporate history is the procedure for encrypting internal email communications that we registered for a patent in fall 2003. The procedure we developed still points the way forward today because it solves the known weak points of the conventional gateway concept, which encrypts and decrypts only emails originating in the Internet, while leaving confidential messages within the corporate network unprotected, often in plain-text format.
In spring 2004, Totemo’s TrustMail Internal Encryption module was officially launched. This unique module encrypts confidential emails within the corporate network too, requiring no client plug-in or additional client software to be installed. The Internal Encryption module, optionally available for the TrustMail gateway or for stand-alone use, lets senders encrypt all emails along the entire route to the recipient, regardless of whether the original aim is to encrypt them end-to-end, end-to-gateway or gateway-to-end. This made Totemo TrustMail the first hybrid secure messaging gateway to join the market to get by with absolutely no plug-ins or additional client software.
To facilitate system administration even further and add extra efficiency, interfaces were implemented for connecting to various directory services including LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory.
In line with our claim of providing our customers with the best security solutions possible, 2005 heralded implementation of the first hardware security modules (HSM) for use in key generation and database encryption.
Totemo recognized very early on that developments in the market for secure messaging applications were headed toward multi-tenancy. Although corporations and internationally active companies were interested in a central solution for their email encryption, at the same time they wanted their group and national subsidiaries to retain their separate corporate identities – while upholding uncompromising compliance with country-specific and security guidelines. Accordingly, TrustMail was steered toward full multi-tenancy at a very early stage. Today, Totemo collaborates with Europe’s leading outsourcing and managed service providers.
During the course of 2006, several important goals were accomplished that in many respects have taken Totemo forward by leaps and bounds. In arvato systems Bertelsmann, we have partnered a large provider of managed services that offers third parties secure messaging based on Totemo TrustMail in the context of application service provision. In the mobile messaging domain, too, Totemo was the first European provider to extend integration of email encryption to BlackBerry Smartphones.
The launch of Totemo TrustMail Release 3.0 coincided with that of the Professional Edition as an alternative product version to the existing Enterprise Edition. The Professional Edition, based on the same innovative and robust software architecture, has practically the identical scope of functions as the Enterprise Edition but is delivered without CA functionality for external exchange partners. It is aimed primarily at companies that favor a central, rule-based, fully scalable, flexible and transparent secure messaging solution without PKI functionality. The WebMail front end was expanded by the PDF download function for converting emails in WebMail into a PDF container that can be download for local use to the Desktop.
In mid-2007, Totemo was first Swiss technology company to become a Certified Technology Partner and gain admittance to the global RSA Partner Program. With the technology partnership between Totemo and RSA, The Security Division of EMC, we help our shared customers to increase their data security and at the same time to target significant returns on their investments in information security.
Data security is a demanding task that needs solving and one that we are always happy to tackle anew. To this end, in early 2008 we extended our technology partnership with RSA, The Security Division of EMC, to include collaboration on data loss prevention. The encryption of data being moved from one location to another (“data in motion”) and data loss prevention form the perfect complement for all companies and authorities tasked with protecting all their confidential information under the terms of guidelines and compliance rules, regardless of where the data is or where it is sent.
RSA’s highly sophisticated Content Analysis tool can analyze email messages and documents based on their contextual significance and not merely against a predefined wordlist, enabling expansion and implementation of currently deployed rule-based email encryption to analysis of content-based encryption. This strategic cooperation helps our customers protect and utilize sensitive data within and outside their corporate networks, and to comply with country-specific compliance and data protection guidelines including HIPAA, GLB, PIPEDA and others, and so reduce substantially the risks and economic impact of data loss.
In May 2008, following a long tradition of giving our customers real added value, we launched the Totemo Security Platform (TSP). It is a dynamic, expansible security architecture based on interoperable standards to protect all data as it travels through all systems, media and protocols. Security features such as encryption, authentication and authorization, certificate and key management, centralized management and more are completely integrated and already in proven use in many areas. The Totemo Security Platform runs on any system, is highly scalable, easy to implement and manage, transparent for end-users and geared to future developments.
As one of the first all-round concepts for securing data in motion, Totemo’s latest security solution for managed file transfer was launched October 2008. Totemo TrustDEX solves the problems of file transfer in the same intelligent, flexible and cost-effective way as email encryption with Totemo TrustMail. Totemo TrustDEX is based on the tried-and-tested Totemo TrustMail technology and is part of the holistic Totemo Security Platform. It forms a controlled environment for secure data exchange between several people, networks and systems, and even beyond company boundaries. The solution not merely encrypts transfer protocols, but also simultaneously checks data integrity. It supports all imaginable types of authentication mechanisms and manages digital certificates and keys. Data movements through the Internet are effectively and transparently controlled, monitored and logged to ensure full compliance. Its integrated workflow engine means that complex workflows can be applied without any programming experience whatsoever – easily and efficiently.
Totemo’s security solutions for secure messaging, secure managed file transfer and secure mobile messaging are leading in the field, pursuing a holistic approach to secure online communications. It keeps all email traffic, file transfers, Web interactions and transactions, Instant Messaging and communication by mobile phone confidential, reliable and efficient.