• by Ray Schultz , November 1, 2017

Identillect Technologies Corp. has introduced an email security product using blockchain technology.

Blockchain can help firms improve the audit log integrity of emails while fighting off Man-in-the-Middle attacks, the company claims. It is being integrated into Identillect’s Delivery Trust product. 

“Email is so vulnerable,” says Todd Sexton, CEO of Identillect. “It makes 100 stops from point to point. And every time that email travels and stops it creates a ghost image, and in that process, that information is available for a brief period of time, and cyber criminals can scrape it, pull it down and own it.”

Sexton adds that criminals are evolving their methods of attack and that regulatory entities are tightening their requirements, resulting in a greater need for email security.

“Email encryption techniques also need to keep evolving to match these changing threats, leveraging-cutting edge technologies such as blockchain to stay up to date with the growing need for secure communications in todays digital environment,” he says.

Blockchain is a ledger system originally used to prevent manipulation of crypo currencies by so-called Men-In-the Middle, Sexton says.   

“That’s why it works for email,” he continues. “That ledger system disallows the Man-In-the-Middle, or manipulation of the information. And it warns if a manipulation tries to occur.”

Sexton adds that “blockchain is very sparingly used in email, but use is starting to grow.”

Blockchain technology can deal directly with Man In the Middle attacks and mobile device tampering, Identillect claims. With blockchain’s distributed ledger, audit log entries are permanently stored and are verifiable.

In general, data breaches of credit card numbers and names can “only do so much damage,” Sexton observes. “But with Social Security numbers, that’s major damage.”

Identillect describes itself as an email security provider. But Sexton adds that “we’re not just an email company.”  The publicly traded firm has 24 employees in the U.S. and roughly 12 in Canada.