Reseller morphs into distie with Office 365 encryption tool

An Australian reseller has become a distributor of Office 365 data encryption software, just as a court ruled on Friday that Microsoft must hand over customer data to government authorities on demand.

"I am ready to announce that Combo has secured distribution rights for Vaultive.com in Australia," said David Markus, managing director and founder of Combo. "We will be known as Vaultive Australia."

Vaultive "offers an important element of control via encryption of data in use, in transit and at rest", Markus told CRN.

"This ensures data is not leaving Australia or the perimeters of an organisation's private network without being encrypted," he said. "The only way to be sure control is maintained is to hold the encryption keys themselves."

Combo, a 2011 and 2012 CRN Fast50 company, has been a reseller of Vaultive since September 2013 but was granted the distribution rights last week, as the US court ruling on Microsoft cloud data hit the headlines.

Markus said that while Microsoft should be commended for fighting in the courts, the recent verdict has worrying implications for customers.

"The Office 365 environment is probably more secure than 99 percent of IT environments owned by businesses," he said. "Yet the order placed on Microsoft by the US courts means businesses and individuals will have to comply with its demands."

The new distie would now look to build an Australian channel for Vaultive with what Markus described as "quality, experienced security oriented systems integrators and MSPs".

Meanwhile, Combo will continue to provide services and "the helpdesk behind Vaultive Australia and iDashboards Australia".

"This is just our play to be ready for the cloud as infrastructure support decreases and hardware is required less and less," said Markus.

The MD said that Combo has boosted its sales team with the addition of Andrew Raymond in Sydney and Mark Refardt in Melbourne.

"We have plenty of space in our offices to keep expanding and great recruitment and induction processes to be ready to add the people we need," he told CRN. "We have had a couple of quiet years to get ready for this next phase and we are coming out ready."

Markus is scheduled to speak at the Annual Technology in Government Expo this week in Canberra.

Vaultive was recently selected by CRN US as an Emerging Vendor of the year in the security category. The company claims that its tool is the only one that "offers encryption of the calendar and its attachments along with the email encryption" in Office 365.