WinZip Computing, Inc. today introduced WinZip® Companion for Outlook®. This new product makes it easy for users of Microsoft® Outlook to zip and encrypt attachments to outgoing e-mail messages.

Zipping e-mail attachments saves transmission time, conserves space in Outlook mailboxes, and saves disk space for both the sender and recipient of the e-mail message. The Companion can be configured to automatically zip your attachments, ask whether or not you want them zipped, or let you zip and attach files manually with just a few mouse clicks. Toolbar and menu items allow you to control the Companion’s functionality on a message-by-message basis. In addition, sensitive attachments can be easily protected with AES encryption.

E-mail attachments you send and receive can contribute to oversized mailboxes that can exceed account restrictions and disk quotas. Receiving and sending attachments in a zipped format assists with mailbox file size restrictions, as well as the attachment size restrictions imposed by network administrators and ISPs.

WinZip Companion for Outlook utilizes the same AES encryption found in WinZip 9.0. The encryption capabilities support 128- and 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption for data security. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected AES as the standard for both U.S. government and private data encryption. WinZip’s implementation of AES encryption is FIPS-197 certified by NIST.

WinZip is the data-compression utility of choice for thousands of organizations, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies, as well as millions of home users. More than 135 million copies have been downloaded from CNET’s Download.com web site alone. Now, WinZip Companion for Outlook brings the power, flexibility, and ease of use of the award-winning WinZip software to the Outlook environment.

A fully functional evaluation version of WinZip Companion for Outlook is available from the WinZip web site at www.winzip.com. A single-user license is US$19, and attractive volume licensing discounts and combination pricing with WinZip 9.0 are available.