Network Associates PGP
PGP is an acronym for “Pretty Good Privacy” which to some may sound a bit too slap dash; a bit of an inconvenience rather than a deterrent. This is certainly not the case; PGP utilises a PKI structure that uses either Diffie-Hellman/DSS encryption, or RSA based on the IDEA algorithm. In the latter case PGP must pay a licence fee to RSA, but the former is free.
To generate an encryption key, the program uses your full name and e-mail address, or any other items you may wish to input at this point. At this stage the user can select the algorithm used, whether or not the key has an expiry date, and the key size, which is configurable between 1024 and 4096 bits.
PGP is actually a small collection of security tools and includes PGPkey, PGPnet, PGPtools, and PGPtray to allow access to the functionality from the system tray. PGPkey is—as the name suggests—a key management tool, with which you can browse key and certificate properties, and send and retrieve keys from a server.
PGPnet is a basic VPN client. With the commercial version, it also includes a personal firewall and intrusion detection software.
The PGPtools interface is a small floating button bar that provides a convenient interface to launch PGPkey as well as encrypt, sign, or encrypt and sign single or multiple files. In addition, the tool bar also provides a useful “wipe” function that will delete a file and wipe the space it occupied to ensure it cannot be retrieved by disk tools. There’s also the “freespace wipe” button that will clean all the free space on your hard drive ensuring no recoverable deleted files are lurking.
We found the encryption engine very fast with 6MB files encrypted in just 1.5 seconds and reduced in size to 1.59MB.
The freeware PGP distributed by Network Associates only supports Windows or Mac but there are countless versions of PGP, with various levels of bells and whistles available for just about every platform under the sun. We should note that to use the product commercially, a commercial licence must be obtained from Network Associates.
| Product: | PGP |
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| Price: | Free, commercial versions available |
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| Vendor: | Network Associates |
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| Phone: | 1800 644 646 |
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| Web: | www.pgp.com/products/freeware/default.asp |
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| Interoperability: |
½Available for Windows and Mac OS. |
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| Futureproofing: |
½
Strong feature set and acceptance in the community. |
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| ROI: |
This is a powerful tool, and what’s more, it’s free. |
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| Service: |
N/A No support from the distributor; interest groups provide quite good support. |
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| Rating: |
½ |
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8%
1%
