The Tech Daily

Firewalls and antivirus software are no defense against acts of data theft and corruption from within your organization at local endpoints. You don't have to be an administrator to connect a small digital camera, MP3 player, or flash memory stick to the USB and begin uploading or downloading whatever you want. If you are a system administrator, you know you can't manage such device-level activity via Group Policy.

Using endpoint device security solution called DeviceLock®, network administrators can lock out unauthorized users from USB and FireWire devices, WiFi and Bluetooth adapters, CD-Rom and floppy drives, serial and parallel ports, PDAs and smartphones, local and network printers and many other plug-and-play devices. Once DeviceLock® is installed, administrators can control access to any device, depending on the time of day and day of the week.

For enterprises standardized on software and hardware-based encryption solutions like PGP® Whole Disk Encryption, TrueCrypt and Lexar® SAFE PSD S1100 USB drives, DeviceLock® allows administrators to centrally define and remotely control the encryption policies their employees must follow when using removable devices for storing and retrieving corporate data. For example, certain employees or their groups can be allowed to write to and read from only specifically encrypted USB flash drives, while other users of the corporate network can be permitted to "read only" from non-encrypted removable storage devices but not write to them.


The USB white list allows you to authorize only specific devices that will not be locked regardless of any other settings. The intention is to allow special devices (e.g. smart card readers) but lock all other devices. Media White List feature allows you to authorize access to specific DVD/CD-ROM disks, uniquely identified by data signature, even when DeviceLock® has otherwise blocked the DVD/CD-ROM drive. A convenience when DVD/CD-ROM disks are routinely used for the distribution of new software or instruction manuals, Media White Listing can also specify allowed users and groups, so that only authorized users are able to access the contents of the DVD or CD-ROM.

The DeviceLock®'s optional data shadowing capability significantly enhances the corporate IT auditor’s ability to ensure that sensitive information has not left the premises on removable media. It captures full copies of files that are copied to authorized removable devices, Windows Mobile and Palm OS-based PDAs and smartphones, burned to CD/DVD or even printed by authorized end users. Shadow copies are stored on a centralized component of an existing server and any existing ODBC-compliant SQL infrastructure of the customer’s choosing.

DeviceLock® Enterprise Server can monitor remote computers in real-time, checking DeviceLock® Service status (running or not), policy consistency and integrity. The detailed information is written to the Monitoring log. Also, it is possible to define a master policy that can be automatically applied across selected remote computers in the event that their current policies are suspected to be out-of-date or damaged.

DeviceLock® allows you to generate a report concerning the permissions that have been set. You can see which users are assigned for what device and what devices are on the USB white list on all the computers across your network.

DeviceLock® provides a level of precision control over device resources unavailable via Windows Group Policy - and it does so with an interface that is seamlessly integrated into the Windows Group Policy Editor. As such, it’s easier to implement and manage across a large number of workstations.

For more information, visit www.devicelock.com

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