Bavarian State Revenues Office Implements Utimaco’s SafeGuard
Oberursel, June 3, 2004 – The Bavarian State Revenues Office in Germany has used Utimaco Safeware’s SafeGuard solutions to implement a comprehensive security concept for its entire mobile IT infrastructure. The concept comprises hard disk encryption for all notebooks used by external staff, the encryption of CDs, and protection of the operating system against harmful programs.
The SafeGuard Easy encryption software is used to protect all data saved on the notebooks against unauthorised access in the case of loss or theft of the devices. SafeGuard PrivateDisk adds a security solution for providing ID-or certificate-protected encryption of data on removable media such as CDs, DVDs, etc. This has provided the Bavarian State Revenues Office with a cost-effective solution for saving larg volumes of data on CDs protected against unauhorised access by encryption.
To ensure a stable system configuration and to protect the operating system against harmful programs, the tax auditors use SafeGuard Advanced Security and its ASAR (Application Specific Access Rights) module. ASAR is a solution that extends file protection at application level and allows specified rules to administrate interaction between users, data and applications. As a result, the Bavarian finance officials can now also set rules for file systems that have insufficient native access control functionality, such as FAT and CDFS, or file systems on Novell and Samba network drives linked on a client.
Even NTFS, with its integral access control functions, is provided with an additional security level, with ASAR. For the first time, it has been possible to define a comprehensive set of rules to restrict users when storing files of a particular file type: the rules specify that the user can only use previously-defined applications and store the date at locations intended for that purpose. Each undefined file type is rejected from the start with the help of each other application at each other storage location. For example, financial audit results in a Word document can only be stored with Microsoft Word in a folder intended for that purpose. It is not possible to copy the data onto a memory stick that a user has brought with them, or send it unauthorised in an email. It is not possible to manipulate the pre-defined working environment by sneaking in third party software or via harmful programs, due to this preventative approach.
“With SafeGuard Easy, our data is also safeguarded against unauthorised access in mobile environments. In addition, using SafeGuard Advanced Security, we have been able to achieve greater system stability since the system is protected both against interference by third party executable files and also against changes by the users themselves. As a result we have been able to reduce maintenance costs on the client systems to a minimum.”, said Josef S?¤ckl, responsible for IT security at the OFD (official main financial controlling unit), Nuremberg, Germany.
SafeGuard products on the Internet:
SafeGuard Easy – http://www.utimaco.com/sg-easy
SafeGuard Advanced Security – http://www.utimaco.com/sgas
SafeGuard Private Disk – http://www.utimaco.com/sg-privatedisk
Utimaco Safeware AG is one of the leading European provider of professional IT security solutions. The security technology and solutions developed by Utimaco Safeware protect the electronic data of companies and government bodies against unauthorised access and guarantee that business processes and administrative procedures in the electronic world are binding and confidential. Utimaco Safeware’s Personal Device Security division supplies technologies and solutions for mobile security in the areas of high-level authentication including biometric techniques, encryption and integrity checks. Its products and solutions secure data in terminal server and Citrix environments, on the PC, notebooks and PDA at the workplace, and on the move.