Data Encryption Systems, which specialises in software copyright protection, data encryption, secure messaging and data storage, is releasing an administrator's tool for its award-winning Deslock+ data encryption software.

This utility enables IT managers, project managers and team leaders to quickly configure multiple Deslock+ licenses and to define and manage company-wide groups and user-rights so that specific documents can be viewed only by authorised individuals.

“Our customers who use Deslock+ to protect the information on multiple computers have been asking us to streamline the process of configuring and distributing encryption keys among users, and to provide a system for managing groups and their respective access rights,” says David Tomlinson, managing director of Data Encryption Systems. “The new Deslock+ Administrator's Tool significantly simplifies these processes for IT managers, and makes it easy to ensure that individual users, or groups of users, have controlled access to specific documents, folders and volumes.”

The management and security of sensitive data is a major challenge that small businesses, enterprises and government agencies must address. Windows does not offer IT managers a simple way to establish and automate an encryption policy, and to apply it company-wide to individual users, workgroups or operating units.

Despite the efforts of even the most cautious IT manager, information such as personnel records, financial databases, medical information and confidential company reports often resides unencrypted on users' computers, and can fall into the wrong hands through security breaches, computer theft or mislaid laptop computers.

The recent PricewaterhouseCoopers and the UK Department of Trade and Industry Information Security Breaches Survey, published in April 2006, provided evidence of this type of security breach. It highlighted that there has been a significant increase in reported insider attacks, over the past year, resulting in corporate losses. It concluded, with a warning, that companies need to consider security policies that encrypt company data from the inside out as well as the outside in, to protect organisations against this type of threat.

Deslock+ helps organisations to protect against 'insider threat' by offering simple, yet extremely powerful, encryption of documents, folders, disks, removable storage media, and computer systems. It also provides encryption of email messages prior to transmission, encrypted compressed archives, and even encryption of clipboard contents.

Deslock+ uses a system of unique encryption keys so that users can exchange encrypted documents with others, who use a shared key to decrypt the document.

Controlling and tracking Deslock+ key assignment in larger organisations can be a challenge; the administrator's tool addresses this issue and provides managers with flexible control over which user, or users, can access which information.

Key features of the administrator's tool include centralised acquisition, configuration and distribution of Deslock+ encryption keys. The application also provides a convenient way for a manager to track which user or department has been assigned a key.

It also provides for the creation, assignment and management of user profiles, enabling commonly used configurations to be applied to specific users or groups of users, and the definition and application of access rights, either to individual users or to groups of users.

Furthermore, option sets can be used to define and limit functionality that is available for each user. For example, a specific user may be allowed to encrypt and delete folders, but not permitted to generate new encryption keys.

For more information, visit www.deslock.com