BT's New Messaging Service Reduces Cost of Secure Messages for Financial Institutions

NEW YORK, March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- BT today announced that its Managed Secure Messaging service is now available to financial institutions globally.  The service allows the financial community to exchange messages securely, reliably and in a non-repudiable manner over BT private networks and the Internet for all of their business activities. The service is designed to meet the security requirements of banks, clearing houses and securities depositories as well as corporate treasurers.

BT Managed Secure Messaging can help cut costs by increasing the automation of message processing, reducing messaging failures and the manual administrative expense of correcting them.  By ensuring that a message is secure, tamper-free and delivered in a non-repudiable manner, users can have confidence that messages sent and received remain unchanged and confidential.

BT's Managed Secure Messaging service is unlike many messaging services. It records that each message has been sent and received, and informs both parties that it has been delivered correctly.  BT-supplied hardware or software gateways at both sending and receiving ends ensure that messages are encrypted, kept secure and intrusion-free.

For example, banks use secure messaging to exchange payment messages with their corporate customers, and for securities settlement messages with investment managers.  Corporate treasurers use secure messaging to interface their own financial systems directly with those of their banks, so that they can better manage liquidity.  Central Counterparties (CCPs) and Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) use secure messaging to exchange messages with their member-firms.  BT's new Managed Secure Messaging Service is aimed at helping these types of organizations to increase their operational efficiency more cost-effectively.

Jose Antonio Martinez, managing director, Radianz & Payments, BT, said: "The need for secure, tamper-proof and non-repudiable messaging between parties in financial transactions continues to grow.  BT's Managed Secure Messaging service enables organizations to reduce their failure rates, reduce the costs of correcting those failures, and increase service levels to their customers.  It is a single messaging tool that allows customers to communicate with everyone across their business community.  We strongly believe that this new service adds great value to our BT Radianz Community."

BT has provided customized managed secure messaging services for individual organizations in the financial sector since 1996.  Each day these services deliver messages, effectively transferring hundreds of billions of pounds, securely, reliably and in a non-repudiable manner with no messages lost.

About BT

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2010, BT Group's revenue was 20,911 million pounds Sterling.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. 

For more information, visit www.bt.com/about.

For more information about global banking & Financial markets, visit bt.com/gbfm.

SOURCE BT