Email security specialist Tumbleweed has unveiled a new strategy to take its products into different vertical markets, such as local government, retail and manufacturing.

Until now, Tumbleweed said it has traditionally focused on the “security elite”, such as banks and military organisations through direct sales. However, it plans to target a wider range of vertical markets through a channel-driven sales model, and has brought in more people at a senior level to support this objective.

Craig Whitney, Tumbleweed managing director in Europe, said interest was being expressed by potential partners in a number of emerging markets, including Russia. It is in such areas where Tumbleweed does not yet have a direct office that the company will look to become channel driven first, he added. “This will assist us in building our profile in regions where we currently don’t have Tumbleweed feet on the ground,” Whitney said.

The demand for Tumbleweed’s services is increasing among all types and sizes of organisations because of the growing publicity around data breaches, according to the vendor. The breaches are causing a surge in regulatory demands, such as the PCI Data Security Standard. This is giving impetus to a “full disclosure” approach that would make details of security vulnerabilities public in the UK and parts of the European Union, said Tumbleweed.

Whitney said, “Companies are being increasingly exposed in terms of compliance issues, security threats and policy issues.”

The increasing threat, particularly with email transfer, is providing a “greenfield” for Tumbleweed and its future partners and giving them a reason to approach all types of organisations, Whitney said. “The threat is becoming more sophisticated and faster than anyone had anticipated,” he added.

Whitney cited the example of rogue file transfer protocol (FTP) servers, where traders set up an FTP server on their business network unknown to the IT department to carry out external business transactions. By bypassing traditional security procedures, they are allowing access with little auditing capability and a large possibility for private data to be leaked out of the company, he warned.

Tumbleweed is particularly interested in building partnerships with firms that address security issues around data breaches, rather than email security, Whitney said. He added that the vendor hopes to be 100 percent channel-driven by the third quarter 2008. “We have set ourselves a goal of signing 30 new partners in the region [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] by the end of the year and we are well on track to achieve this as we have a large pipeline and lots of interest,” he said.