Ceelox, Inc., a provider of biometric security software for enterprise networks and commercial applications, has released Ceelox Vault, a biometric authentication and encryption solution designed to protect lost or stolen data and combat identity theft.

Ceelox Vault enables the user to simultaneously encrypt files and copy or move them to a server, personal computer, or external storage device. The customer then selects one of three industry standard ciphers (AES256, 3DES, or Blowfish448) for the file encryption. The encryption algorithms use a key attached to the user in a manner that requires the users fingerprint to encrypt and decipher the files.

The user, after gaining access to the vault application through biometric authentication, works from a window, which displays all personal computer files on the left side of the window and the vault drive files on the right side of the window.

Files and folders move back and forth between the computer and the vaulted storage device by simply clicking on them, dragging them to their destination and dropping them. Access to a vaulted storage location, controlled by the use of a fingerprint scanner embedded in a portable hard drive, an external fingerprint scanner, or the fingerprint scanner embedded in a laptop or mobile computing device.

This provides two levels of security with authentication being required not only to access the drive but also to decrypt the files on the drive.
[The devil with this type of solution, is in the details: how are biometric templates generated, stored and applied. Canadian research has shown that if an attacker can gain access to the biometric template there is a good chance he can reverse engineer it and produce an artificial finger that can be used to authenticate. Other research has shown that it is easy to produce artificial limbs that will authenticate, although this has become more difficult for newer systems. Before selecting a system like this it must be analysed in minute detail to ascertain which risks are associated. --Ed].

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www.ceelox.com

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