Workshare Gets Industrial Strength Encryption

Data in the legal world is no less secure or insecure as data in other industry verticals. Like other verticals, the legal field contains a large installation base of operating systems and office suites from Microsoft Corp. So, security by obscurity does not really work here. And as we all know, the layers of security from the firewall to the data center are necessary, but not always sufficient to protect data. Especially when you have lawyers running to courts with laptops in hand. That's why Workshare has come out with a new encryption service.

Workshare develops and distributes content-protection, content-control, and workflow software for law firms. As part of their Unified Content Protection Suite, Workshare announced the availability of encryption capabilities for its Protect Premium client. Combining policy creation and enforcment capabilities to prevent data leaks with a mechanism, AKA encryption, to protect mobile data is going to be appealing for law firms with lawyers on the run with laptops. After all, lawyers have ethical duties to protect and preserve client information.

The new Workshare service uses EAS in CBC (cypher block chaining) mode with 256-bit keys. With this, the Workshare Protect Crypto client, by itself, can encrypt data on local disks, network volumes, removable media, individual files and folders. It can also engage password encryption and integrate with some e-mail security services from the likes of Secure Computing, CryptZone, Voltage, and Utimaco. The new product integrates with Windows login and includes support for Active Directory integration. And of course, it works with Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Now, if you want to add central control to install, configure, and maintain the encryption on client systems, Workshare also provides a Management System Protect Crypto server.

If Workshare can enable IT management to install, configure, and manage encryption on client systems as easily as anti-virus services and allow end users to use encyrption with little to no interaction, it will have a successful run as a product and a good chance for longevity in this market.