Time was when it cost a lot of money to send electronic data securely.  Time was when downloading a 50 MB file from one computer to another wasn’t just a “black art” (otherwise known as “data communications”) – it was pretty much impossible.

Nowadays your PC is probably set to download operating system updates automatically over the internet, and you don’t even notice that it has just downloaded a 50MB security update from the other side of the world without a hitch.

Today the vast majority of messages within the financial services industry don’t need to have extra security added over and above the intrinsic security of the private network or virtual private network.  Using the internet is different, though – we all understand that the public internet is intrinsically not secure.

The inclusion of a DVD drive in every PC and the use of flat screen technologies for PC monitors has helped to increase the production numbers of DVD drives and flat screens and reduce the cost per unit, which has also had the spin-off benefit of making home DVD players and flat-screen TVs cheaper and cheaper.  Economies of scale count.

We’re now seeing secure messaging services being launched by more and more service providers, and these are targeted not just at the thousands of banks but at the tens of millions of commercial internet users around the world.  That will result in a much higher user base for secure messaging solutions, and the increased use of competing secure messaging services across the financial sector as well as the commercial sector will help to dramatically lower the cost per user or per message for secure messaging.