Content

CREDANT Technologies Mobile Guardian Enterprise

Mobile Guardian Enterprise Edition is a client-server encryption architecture that deploys encryption policies from a centralized management console to various Windows-based clients and mobile devices. The solution uses Microsoft SQL Server as its database, and the client components can be deployed to Windows platforms and mobile devices, such as Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and others.

To update policies on remote machines, we installed the server component and the policy proxy on a Windows 2003 server, which used Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for the database. The client component (Windows Shield) was installed on a Windows XP SP3 host machine. Overall installation of the server products was a bit cumbersome and lacked easy automated tasks. We had to customize an XML file, create a manual license key, and configure the server mostly through command prompts. However, once the server was up and running, managing the deployment of client components was very easy.

The product does not protect the boot sector at login and does not contain a PBA (pre-boot authentication) screen. However, the product does encrypt volumes, folders and files on the hard disk, and confidential data remains encrypted if the hard drive is removed. We liked the integration with Active Directory as it provides the ability to deploy policies to various users, groups or organizational units. Policy creation, management, reporting and other configuration options were easy to use within the centralized management server. The ability to push updated policy to remote devices using a special proxy server was nice as well.

The PDF files provided an exhaustive list of possible configuration parameters, but lacked a helpful structure that you would expect to find in a how-to scenario.

Basic eight hours a day/five days a week phone, email and web support is included in the product. A 24/7 Gold support option is available for $10,000. Overall, we felt the documentation and somewhat convoluted setup takes away from an otherwise good offering from CREDANT Technologies.
Product title
Credant Technologies Mobile Guardian Enterprise
Product info
Name: Mobile Guardian Enterprise Description: Price: $30-$100/shield depending on volume
Strength
Intuitive way of handling removable media.
Weakness
LDAP integration, key recovery and documentation could use small improvements.
Verdict
An overall solid offering given the price point for volume licensing.

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