Jetico BCWipe Enterprise Removes Sensitive Data
Posted by
Mike Fratto and Editor
June 26, 2009
Jetico, located in Finland, announced BCWipe Enterprise with Enforcer designed to give enterprise administrators command and control over secure data deletion policies. BCWipe Enterprise can be installed via system management tools like SMS or LANDesk, can run as a Windows service, and can be configured to wipe protected files like system files at boot time. Volume list pricing is 100 licenses - $73.90 per license; 1000 licenses - $39.30 per license. It's a bit high but compared to a data leak, could be a good investment.
There are many facets to data protection including access controls which are largely operating system dependent and encryption. Most file and folder encryption products require user interaction or require users to remember to use a special folder. Getting users to change behavior can be a lesson in futility and with file and folder encryption, parts of sensitive files can be leaked to the operating system via virtual memory swap and temporary files. Full disk encryption is easier on the end-user but with full disk encryption, secure wiping of data on shared computers may be desirable. Many of the secure wiping utilities suffer from the same user interaction issues as file and folder encryption.
BCWipe Enterprise with Enforcer centralizes the secure wipe policies so an administrator can configure default actions. For example, BCEnterprise can be configured to periodically wipe specific files and folders, including the Recently Used Files folder in Windows which prevents knowledge of what files have been opened from leaking. File names can include wildcards so you could write a rule to delete all spreadsheet and document by file extension. BCWipe adds a Delete and Wipe option to the explorer right click menu, but we'd like the option to replace Windows Delete menu item with delete and wipe, something Jetico says the are developing for a future release, so that users don't have to make a choice.
Administrators can even schedule periodic wiping of slack space—the extra unused disk space used at the end of a file; the wiping of free space—the disk space that is unused but may contain information from deleted files, and the discovery and wiping of NTFS alternate data streams which is a way to attach multiple files to a single file name. A program may attach an icon to a file as an alternate data stream rather than adding an independent file. Administrators can also initiate remote file wipes from the management station as well.
BCWipe Enterprise can also delete files and directories locked by Windows such as system folders which contain temporary files, cookies, etc. Wiping the hibernation file is particularly useful because the hibernation file contains a snapshot of RAM and other information needed to take a computer to and from hibernation mode (hibernation actually turns you computer off, sleep or stand-by just reduces power consumption but your computer is still running).
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