In the past, it was fairly easy to keep corporate data protected by keeping it within an established perimeter—protected by established access controls and passwords.  That model has been blown apart as iPhone, iPad and other smartphones and tablets have taken over. Add to that the accessibility and usability of file sharing services like Dropbox and you can see why this transformation has information security managers concerned. These are not trends that organizations can deal with by saying “no.”  They urgently need solutions to help secure confidential data and limit access.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Symantec’s new encryption solutions, powered by PGP Technology, are now shipping. With this Symantec Encryption release, Symantec leverages our encryption portfolio to ensure cloud data remains safe while keeping it accessible, and to protect confidential email for mobile.

Here’s a look at what’s new....

There's a growing buzz in the industry about "who" should be responsible for encryption in the cloud from a user perspective.  As usual, the technology to do this is not the hard part – crypto is crypto is crypto, etc.  It's really more of a privacy and legal issue; privacy from the perspective of preventing others from seeing your stuff in the cloud and legal from the perspective of who has control over that data that is secured in the cloud.  
 
I think we all get the idea of privacy of our data in the cloud.  For example, if you put your personal financial data in the cloud to either be stored and/or used by an application, you want to make sure the data is secure.  If it's just storage, then you can personally encrypt the data before you store it in the cloud using encryption solutions like PGP.  If you're lucky enough to have a cloud provider that encrypts it for you, but gives you complete...

Stuck at the DMV?  Reply to some email.  Waiting to get your car washed?  Review an upcoming press release.  Stuck in traffic?  Edit the monthly sales forecast - send it back.  At the airport?  You get the point. 

(Dear California Highway Patrol Officer, I would never text and drive, I swear… honestly, please stop staring at me, okay, okay, I’m putting it down.)

Most people don’t even think twice about doing work wherever they are thanks to the vast array of mobile devices on the market.  What’s scary is how comfortable we are throwing sensitive data around and storing it on unsecure devices without even a thought of whether or not it’s safe to do so.  So… how does an organization enable their workforce to continue the working experience they’ve grown used to but have the peace of mind that they’re not going to end up on some news wire explaining how they lost...

I'm David Finkelstein, and welcome to my Encryption Blog.

Here I'll share with you some of my thoughts and observations on security in general, and encryption in particular.  I might discuss in detail the security aspects of Symantec's encryption products, but I'll leave the product announcements and  business related messages to others.  My interest is in cryptography and security, as practiced here at Symantec and elsewhere.

I've worked for security related companies for over 15 years.  Here at Symantec, I'm the Director of Engineering responsible for the Encryption group's Core Cryptographic team.  We produce the PGP Software Development Kit, a FIPS validated cryptographic toolkit used throughout Symantec, as well as PGP Command Line, the absolute best OpenPGP compliant application available (though I freely admit my opinion is biased).

So welcome to...