Advertisement: AlertBoot Full Disk Encryption Software

This is a fantastic idea.

I’ve heard of full disk encryption before - when I worked for a credit card company all of our database servers had full disk encryption and it was very expensive and required a massive deployment effort by our IT staff. But Data Guard Systems’ AlertBoot is a managed service that’s trying to bring this enterprise idea to the masses. At least, those technically savvy masses who care to protect the information they carry on their laptops and PCs.

Targeted at IT departments and marketed at $12.95/month I think this product has a real chance of success - having worked in the financial sector for 3 years this would have been a no-brainer option for securing the laptops we all carted home. We were never supposed to have critical information on our laptops, but I’m sure it happened more often than it should.

Since the service is not live yet I wasn’t able to test it, but when they go live in April I hope they add the ability for a free trial, as well as some screen shots of the product in action. Their website has loads of good information, but I felt a little overwhelmed by all of the text and would have welcomed some palate-cleansing images.

Three other things they need to clean up on their website: the sign up link in the Flash movie doesn’t appear until a few seconds after the page loads, the link is dead, and once you do get to the “Contact me when this service goes live” page, they require phone number and company name. Bad! But two thumbs up for including pricing on the home page!

I will be watching this company and other competitors that pop up, given that this space seems ripe for expansion given the heavy concerns about privacy and the ongoing breaches of sensitve data.

About Me: My name is Rob Walling and I'm a software developer living and working in Los Angeles (temporarily residing in New Haven, Connecticut). I write about hiring, managing, and motivating software developers, in addition to random outbursts on improving development skills and software startups.

My consulting firm, The Numa Group, performs .NET development for clients throughout the United States. If you are in need of a .NET developer or architect, drop me a line.

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