State of North Carolina Selects WinMagic's SecureDoc Full-Disk Encryption

September 10, 2007; 02:57 AM

WinMagic^® Inc. (www.winmagic.com), the innovative leader in disk encryption, has announced that its SecureDoc full-disk encryption solution has met the State of North Carolina’s RFP criteria pertaining to the protection of the sensitive, unclassified data residing on approximately 50,000 desktops, 13,000 laptops, and 1000 mobile devices deployed across its Agencies.  The blanket purchase agreement contract was awarded to WinMagic’s authorized partner for products and service, Carolina Advanced Digital.  While the contract is mandatory for government agencies, it will be offered as a convenience contract to the North Carolina University and Community College System, as well as the K-12 school system and local government agencies.

The State of North Carolina selected SecureDoc as it provided the flexibility to enable each Agency to provide and manage its own centralized key escrow for all equipment and/or enable the Office of Information Technology Services to centrally manage encryption products for consolidated Agencies.  SecureDoc’s ability to seamlessly integrate with more than one centralized management server also ensures Agencies can overcome network filtering, security protections, bandwidth limitations and support boundaries, particularly within large distributed agencies.  SecureDoc will also enable State of North Carolina’s Agencies operating satellite offices in remote locations, to efficiently secure data over low bandwidth connections.

“Carolina Advanced Digital, Inc. chose WinMagic as its disk encryption partner after extensive research and evaluation,” said Susan Jabbusch, Vice President, Carolina Advanced Digital, Inc.  “SecureDoc is the most robust and reliable solution we found and the fact that it is NSA certified carries a lot of weight with us and our clients who are as security conscious as CAD is,” Jabbusch continued.  “CAD has always offered best-in-breed solutions for all our data and infrastructure solutions since we field engineers for the technology partners we represent.”

Having supported the encryption of mobile devices since 1998, WinMagic’s SecureDoc also enables State of North Carolina to protect all data on the approximately 1,000 mobile devices currently deployed across the Agencies.  WinMagic’s tireless work with all major security hardware vendors ensures it can seamlessly integrate with the Palm, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile operating systems currently in use.

“Like most forward-thinking organizations, the State of North Carolina wants to implement an encryption solution that makes sense from both a security and business perspective,” said Thi Nguyen-Huu, CEO for WinMagic.   “WinMagic believes that whatever you can do with an unencrypted disk you should be able to do with an encrypted disk, and so has developed SecureDoc to provide complete data protection on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices without sacrificing the functionality that is so critical to user productivity,” Nguyen-Huu continued.  “In essence, SecureDoc eliminates the need for organizations to choose between security and efficiency.”

Working at the pre-boot level, SecureDoc makes it simple to incorporate single- or multi-factor authentication through passwords, USB tokens, smart cards, biometrics, and PKI technology.  For a list of smart cards and readers supported by SecureDoc, visit http://www.winmagic.com/solutions/third-party-integration.html.  SecureDoc also supports removable media including USB thumb drives, flash removable media, and CD/DVDs – enabling organizations to transparently implement IT data security policies that will ensure that all removable media is encrypted to prevent data leakage of personal identifiable information and sensitive data.

Compatible with all editions of Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, and 2000, SecureDoc Enterprise Server (SES) edition also makes it simple to configure user/group profiles, deploy them, and manage them for tens of thousands of users.  Remote features permit adding, removing, or augmenting user/group profiles as well as allowing password recovery and integration/synchronization with Active Directory and other LDAP servers.

In addition, SES is uniquely positioned to provide the dynamic provisioning of keys and key files to users, and possesses the unique ability to label keys in human readable terms so that they can be easily identified and recognized for encrypted archived data stores.  Problems related to unlocking these long term storage archives are solved as the respective encryption key can now be dynamically provisioned.  Passwords will not be remembered 20 years from now, but the encryption keys can still be easily identified in human readable text formats.

WinMagic’s SecureDoc holds Certificate #1 issued by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and holds numerous accreditations, certifications, and awards including not only FIPS 140-2 Level 1, but Level 2, to the exclusion of our competitors.  SecureDoc’s FORTEZZA-based version is also the only disk encryption software certified by the NSA to safeguard U.S. government’s “SECRET” level data.

About WinMagic Inc.
WinMagic’s robust and innovative SecureDoc software provides the world’s most secure full-disk encryption. Easy to use, deploy, and manage, SecureDoc Enterprise Edition makes it simple to combine full-disk encryption with user authentication at pre-boot. Authentication is provisioned in a single- or multi-factor fashion including password, smart card, TPM, hardware token, PKI, and biometrics. SecureDoc protects data at rest for endpoint devices including desktops, notebooks, external USB drives, and CD/DVDs. WinMagic’s data at rest solution provides granular capabilities of end-user management at an enterprise level through integration with MS Active Directory, LDAP servers, or PKI. SecureDoc’s unparalleled robustness, operability, and performance allows for easy enterprise deployments offering centralized administration with remote installation, and password recovery. Headquartered in Mississauga, Canada, WinMagic operates in over 43 countries.

For more information on products or services, please visit www.WinMagic.com, call 1-888-879-5879, or email info@WinMagic.com.