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 From
The Exhibit Hall: Asynchrony's PDA Defense
By Rich Tehrani
I've been exploring the exhibit hall here at Planet
PDA and I came across a company that makes security software for an issue that almost every company has.
Asynchrony Software makes a product called PDA
Defense which is designed to enhance data security for PDAs.
As many companies have come to realize, data security on PDAs needs to
improve dramatically and immediately. Many corporations don't even
realize that their precious corporate data is downloaded and lost on
PDAs. A statistic from Gartner Group says that over 250k devices will
be lost this year! How many will have your confidential data on them?
The goal of PDA Defense is to not only protect data
but do it in a way that is user-friendly for users and administrators.
It comes in a Palm OS version that has multiple levels.
- The personal version protects built in Palm apps
with 64 bit encryption.
- The professional version encrypts all info on
device with 512 bit encryption.
- The enterprise version also uses 512 bit
encryption and allows admin to make mandatory and optional
security settings to the devices. For example you can force
minimum password lengths, force a password change after a certain
number of days.
At this show they announced new features we can
expect in 30 days that will allow you to disable beaming and allows
only approved apps to run.
They push admin settings or policy configuration
changes to users through AvantGo as well as other methods.
Their application can have a grace period on
passwords (like Pocket PC 2002) allowing you to specify that no
password is requested for a period of time regardless of whether the
device has powered down. There is also a smart lock function that
allows device (if set) to turn on password protection when the device
is manually powered off. This happens even within the grace period.
You can also have your device set
to bitwipe if too many password attempts take place. (You set the
number)
Also if device is not synched within a day (any user
or admin specified time period), all data can be cleared.
Asynchrony's solution should contribute to the
market by helping to solve one of the many security problems lurking
out there.
Read
Aysynchrony's new announcement from the show.
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