Organization
NetEx™, Inc.
www.netex.com

Industry
Internet services

Challenge
To create an easy-to-use transparent document management platform that features high-end security.

Solution
Entrust® Technologies Inc. -
Entrust/PKI™
EntrustFile™ Toolkit
EntrustSession™ Toolkit
Entrust/Toolkit™ Java™ edition

Results

Guaranteed communication, on-time delivery and cost effectiveness are among the most important bottom-line considerations for business today. In combining these standards in their company's flagship product, along with the security features of Entrust Technologies, NetEx, Inc. of New Orleans has a marketplace winner with a unique solution.

The NetEx software is a powerful combination of patented imaging technology and a Windows®-based graphical user interface. The software provides a single, logical method of creating, sending and receiving all types of documents and e-mail over the Internet. NetEx interacts with a user's default e-mail system that allows the creation, transmission and receipt of all e-mail using an existing mail address book in one program - including Lotus Notes®, Microsoft Outlook®, and Microsoft Exchange®.

NetEx is designed for secure electronic transmission of any document, including those that are handwritten, paper-based, or feature graphical images or electronic media. NetEx is also the first electronic-delivery messenger to automate the use of digital certificates for robust encryption and authentication of users' identities.

How it works
A package is easily created by either attaching an electronic file, or by scanning a hard copy, or printing directly to the NetEx virtual printer driver. Once the package is created, the NetEx software, which is free to use, secures and sends the encrypted package directly to the NetEx server. The server then processes the encryption, certificate security, authentication, tracking, confirmation and the archiving of all documents.

NetEx informs the recipient via e-mail, fax, pager or voice that a document has been sent to NetEx and is awaiting pickup. The recipient then accesses the NetEx server using a personal digital certificate for authentication, and downloads the package where it is automatically de-encrypted and opened.

"What's exclusive to us is that you have the option of downloading, viewing a file and having it re-encrypted when you close the document where it remains in your hard drive," says NetEx President and Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert.

"If I'm in the middle of an airport or at a client site and need to get at a document, I can download it. But even if a connection is secure, once a file is downloaded it's wide open. But in this case, it stays encrypted and locked up on the hard drive."

Encrypted and economical
Using Entrust Technologies' PKI solutions for e-business, Mr. Meffert says that NetEx is able to launch a new line of business that allows customers to save up to 80 per cent over traditional express-delivery costs while preserving an environment with a high level of trust and document security.

"Within the overnight courier market, which is approximately $35 billion U.S. a year just among the major top-tiers, 30 percent of that business will belong to the Net," explains Mr. Meffert.

With NetEx's offering, the Internet could capture more of that market and realize "immediate cost savings" for major companies that typically ship paper documents in an envelope by messenger, he says.

Recently, Universal Express, Inc. of Plainview, New York announced that its Postal Business Center Network plans to use NetEx's secure electronic delivery system for member stores.

To illustrate the cost-effectiveness of its solution, NetEx charges customers only $9.95 a month to send between one and five megabytes of information (or between 30 and 150 pages of plain text) through its secure transmission pipeline. That amounts to a $27 savings over sending the same information by overnight delivery.

Entrust 'cream of the crop'
Beyond the economics, security is vital to NetEx's success, says Mr. Meffert, who explains that the firm shopped around before discovering the right combination that wasn't "a hodgepodge of various technologies that wouldn't have worked as well."

As he explains, "There's a perception in the marketplace - an accurate one - that Entrust encryption technology is the cream of the crop."

NetEx uses Entrust Technologies' flagship software, Entrust/PKI, to issue and manage digital certificates that provide full-strength encryption to protect sensitive documents, and authenticate senders and receivers so only trusted receivers are able to unscramble the message.

"We are the document delivery service on the Internet that provides high-end encryption with automatic digital certificate management on both the Web and the desktop," Mr. Meffert says.

"There is nobody that is offering the level of security that we're offering. Every competitor we have offers security in the transmission of the document, but does not offer security after reception."

He adds that NetEx is able to control whether a document is forwarded, or allows a user to forward a file and obtain confirmation as to the document's destination path.

"The challenge for us was to create a platform feature-rich enough, and transparent enough, to the user in an easy-to-use interface that features high-end security. Only this way can we present a viable alternative to the existing mode of document management," Mr. Meffert says.

PKI gives secure point-to-point delivery
With Entrust Technologies' public-key encryption technology, NetEx is in a position to offer customers a "plug-and-play, one-stop shop for the point-to-point sending of messages and documents," Mr. Meffert explains.

By mid-2000, NetEx expects that its secure transmission product will be available to "hundreds of thousands" of customers.

NetEx itself has found using its all-in-one secure electronic transmission software invaluable in the way the private firm runs its own business, says Mr. Meffert.

"In one of our investment rounds, we closed a deal on NetEx."