North Rock Communications has brought secure e-mail to the masses as part of a bid to rebrand its image as a more customer service oriented company.

North Rock, which is the largest residential Internet service provider on the Island, launched the service to its corporate customers late last year. Yesterday, it made North Rock Secure Mail available to all customers in light of the fact that email is finding its way into the hands of the wrong people, and identity theft is becoming more prevalent in the world.

The company is among a number of heavyweights including IBM and Verizon in selecting the Toronto-based software called Echoworx Secure Mail which is based on industry standard technologies for strong encryption and digital signatures.

Vicki Coelho, general manager of North Rock Communications said: "Previously, few people or organisations have had the technical expertise or financial backing to create their own proprietary encrypted e-mail infrastructure, but now, any e-mail user can ensure the safety of their communications with North Rock Secure Mail."

North Rock Secure Mail which starts at $7.95 per corporate or residential e-mail account allows anyone with an email address to send and receive emails that are encrypted, digitally signed, and unalterable.

Subscribers simply download a small plug-in then click the "Secure" button to encrypt the email and its attachments. Once sent, the message can only be decrypted by the intended recipient via an agreed password with the sender. The recipient does not have to be a subscriber.

The new platform will also give North Rock the ability to offer other services such as secure file storage which will allow users to protect information sitting on their computers in encrypted folders. They will also be able to store information with North Rock in their own "personal deposit box".

The products are among a number of changes at the nine-year-old company which began as an Internet Service Provider and later moved into fixed wireless, long distance and telephone service.

Last year, after the company had problems with its e-mail service, it made a significant investment in its back office infrastructure. It also tripled its off-Island bandwidth to. "Everything from top to bottom is more robust," said Ch? Barker, marketing manager for North Rock Communications Ltd.

"We have added redundancy on every single level and we added more storage than we're every going to use for the Island so we're not going to run into problems where we are short of space and scrambling around," he said. The move to boost its marketing and customer service efforts also comes as the population rapidly moves from traditional dial up to high speed broadband or wireless.

North Rock estimates that 20 percent of its customers have made the switch in the past few months.

Mrs. Coehlo said, "We're at a maturing point in our history and what we want to do going forward is really driving to customer service and innovative products such as the secure mail as a value added product to differentiate ourselves from the competition."