Janteknology Encryption Plus Enterprise Edition
Under the Encryption Plus banner falls a suite of programs each with their own dedicated function—Hard Disk, Folders, CD-ROM, E-mail, and Secure Export. They all use the Blowfish encryption algorithm; the commercial version of the package utilises 192-bit encryption, while the freeware version is only 64-bit. We’re pretty sure you can guess what Hard Disk, Folders, CD-ROM, and E-mail do, while Secure Export will encrypt files for secure distribution using media such as floppy drives, tapes, CD-ROMs, and e-mail.
The administrator has the option to define the export file extension; you can give them EPE or NEX extensions rather than EXE, because many firewalls and e-mail programs will not pass self-extracting EXE files.
Once installed, using the software is quite painless. The export window clearly lays out the destination file name, source file/s, and the encryption password.
The recipient simply runs the EXE file and puts in the password for the file/s to be correctly decrypted.
Encryption Plus Folders is also simple to install, although it requires a reboot to complete the configuration. Interestingly, the software included an “Authenti-Check” setup step. This allows the user to input three questions to which the user will be the only one to know all three answers. If the password is lost, the user can run Authenti-Check, give the three answers, and put in a new password. Using the software is also a doddle. Running the Folders applet presents the user with a simple button interface that includes changing passwords, adding users, mounting devices, and of course protecting folders. The interface is clean and simple to use, and once the folder has been protected, future access from other applications is as seamless as unprotected folders, providing of course you are a user who has access rights. Each time Windows starts up, the user is asked for a user name and password to identify their access level to the various protected folders. While the installation of the Encryption Plus Hard Disk software is quick and easy, the configuration process is more complex than the other Encryption Plus applications.
Setting up the initial user defaults is a multi-step process, but to be fair, it takes this number of steps because the list of configuration settings is extensive and very useful. There is a very flexible list of settings for user passwords, ranging from required special characters and expiry dates through to lockout counts. Users can be configured to log in to Windows and Encryption Plus as a single-step or two-step process. The final step in the configuration process is arguably the most important and includes the setting of the initial encryption speed. Why? Well the default setting is “fast” but of course this will consume more system resources than “slow”. If your PC isn’t that powerful, you may wish to select “slow” so that your foreground work does not overly suffer while background encryption is occurring.
The software can be configured to encrypt the entire disk, or just the sections with data on them. You can also speed up performance by disabling the software’s power loss recovery feature, but this means you may lose data if there is a power loss.
On completion of the user setup, the administration utility creates a setup directory that can be run locally or remotely for each user. This installs the user portion of Encryption Plus Hard Disk. The interface is simple and very easy to navigate, however we found that encrypting our 10GB partition was very slow when compared to EncryptNT. Admittedly the configuration selected was encrypting the entire disk space, as was EncryptNT. While the encryption speed was set to “fast”, the fact that we had “Recovery after Power Loss” enabled would not have helped improve on the almost five hours required to encrypt the partition.
| Product: | Encryption Plus Enterprise Edition |
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| Price: | CD-ROM from AU$998, E-mail and Secure Export from AU$139.90 per user, Folders and Hard Disk from AU$199.90 per user, including annual maintenance |
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| Vendor: | Janteknology |
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| Phone: | (02) 9659 1888 |
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| Web: | www.janteknology.com.au |
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| Interoperability: |
½Windows 98, NT, 2000, and XP. |
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| Futureproofing: |
Lots of uses, and strong encryption. |
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| ROI: |
Decent value, but a bit slower than the alternatives. |
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| Service: |
Extensive support available with maintenance contracts. |
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| Rating: |
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1%
8%
