Voltage also has a Hybrid Service (RSA)

Hybrid services seem to be quite the theme on this weblog, for some reason. I just talked to Voltage Security, which announced something called "Connected VSN" today.

Now, I know what VSN is -- the Voltage Security Network. It's a hosted service that implements the key management for Voltage-style identity-based encryption (IBE). The idea being that instead of on-premise key management, you centralize the key generation in the cloud. This is similar to the architecture used by Identum (now part of Trend Micro). But what's the "Connected" bit all about?

There's a class of customer who wants to do outbound encryption at the gateway -- possibly driven by local policy -- but doesn't want to provide the decryption service to non-local users. This type of hybrid architecture is what Connected VSN is for.

The sender has an on-premise Voltage appliance that manages keys and performs outbound encryption. Recipients then use the VSN service hosted by Voltage to decrypt the message.