EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Postini CEO Quentin Gallivan, Part 2: Strategies and Services

E-mail and other forms of electronic communications have become pervasive and essential to business growth and operational productivity. This new dependency on messaging has created a whole new spectrum of major risks, vulnerabilities and requirements for companies of all sizes.

In Part 1 of this two-part interview, Postini's President and CEO Quentin Gallivan expressed his views on how corporations have struggled with the risks associated with employees' unbridled use of e-mail and instant messaging since stringent federal regulations took effect over the last two years. Postini provides strategies to protect large and small organizations from e-mail and IM exposure threats.

In the second half of our interview, Gallivan focuses on more of the strategies and services available to companies.

E-Commerce Times: What do you see as the most pressing threats to businesses today regarding use of IM and e-mail?

Quentin Gallivan: Postini customers tell us that the volume of external threats continues to increase to levels that are unmanageable by customers on their own. They are seeing increased threats across e-mail, IM and the Web. Furthermore, threats from internal sources are beginning to mount with employees either maliciously or inadvertently sending e-mails/posting Web content with sensitive or confidential information. And certainly, since most business communications are conducted via these channels today, companies are now more than ever worried about the liability contained within archived messages.

E-Commerce Times: Are there reactions from customers about being safe from legal threats that cause you concern?

Gallivan: One thing that Postini has realized in working with our customers is that IT and legal need to work together to move their companies toward compliance because the costs of not complying are significant in terms of potential penalties or loss of company reputation. We recently reprinted with permission the "Business Guide to Compliance" by Cynthia Jackson, a partner of Baker & McKenzie, that also clearly articulated this concern.

E-Commerce Times: What role did Postini play in issuing this guidebook and what feedback have you gotten since this book's release?

Gallivan: Response to this guidebook has been very positive, as Ms. Jackson is a well-regarded expert who makes the compliance issues easy to understand and digest for non-legal audiences. In the original webcast, we had over 1,000 registrants. Many of them are now in active evaluation of their compliance policies and are looking at how Postini can help them.

Ms. Jackson also spoke at seven executive round tables around the country which have been well-attended by over 150 top executives. She has also given a webinar, whose initial registration attracted more than 800 people. We believe our customers find this informative guide very useful to help them move forward with their message of compliance strategy .

E-Commerce Times: Postini offers a managed service to help businesses protect themselves from legal problems. Is this the only solution Postini offers, or are there different levels of products available from Postini?

Gallivan: Postini offers a suite of solutions designed to address both compliance and security. Postini's security services in e-mail, IM and the Web protect our customers from spam, virus and other potentially harmful attacks. Our archiving solutions help businesses comply with the newly amended rules of FRCP (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) in addition to other regulations that might stipulate the retention of specific information.

Our encryption solutions ensure that customers secure sensitive data in compliance with various rules such as GLBA (The Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act") and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that require businesses to protect information such as credit card numbers, private health information, etc.

E-Commerce Times: Do you see the business use of IM and/or e-mail in business settings remaining at current levels or ultimately being replaced by other technology?

Gallivan: We have seen an increasing need for IM and e-mail use in business settings. In fact, more customers are considering scaling up the use of IM to support business communications.

E-Commerce Times: How has the recent purchase of Postini by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) changed or enhanced Postini's position as a security leader?

Gallivan: We are tremendously excited by the additional resources that Google can bring to bear on what Postini does. Both companies share a common vision, which is to enable our customers to leverage multiple communication channels for business productivity.

E-Commerce Times: How has the company's mission changed to benefit Postini's customers under this new ownership?

Gallivan: Both companies share a common mission, which is to drive significant innovation, scale and reliability to reduce the cost and complexity of making those communication channels secure and compliant. Our customers and strategic partners have shown overwhelming enthusiasm for Google's acquisition of Postini because they know that Google's innovation and scale combined with Postini's technology, operations and customer service can drive significant value to them. That's why we believe our customers will continue to look to Postini to manage their electronic communications.

E-Commerce Times: What distinguishes Postini's offerings from other solutions?

Gallivan: Postini's approach is unique. Our solutions are provided on-demand, which means customers have no hardware or software to buy, install or manage. Our solutions are always current, meaning they require no integration, upgrades and patch management. Postini is also unique compared to other on-demand vendors. Postini's architecture enables us to process mail in real time, ensuring that our customer's e-mails are not copied to disk during the filtering process, which enables us to observe the highest levels of confidentiality.

The alternatives to managed services solutions such as Postini's include using appliances and an array of software tools to manage security and compliance. However, these legacy approaches have proven to be costly and complex. They represent multiple points of failure, cannot scale well, do not have global threat profile visibility and are not flexible enough to manage changing regulatory requirements.