Microsoft Germany Secures Its Mobile Devices with Utimaco’s

Oberursel, 12th May 2005 – Productive but secure work at any time is Microsoft Deutschland’s motto: for this reason the largest European subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation has installed SafeGuard® PDA on its approx. 480 PDAs used by its mobile staff from sales, consultation and management. The security software, from Utimaco, uses intelligent authentication and encryption mechanisms to protect the mobile end devices against unauthorized operation and data theft.

Microsoft Deutschland’s “Mobile Security” concept includes secure authentication, encryption for all data, and central administration, as especially important core criteria for the comprehensive protection of its mobile end devices. A project team formed from the company’s IT and data protection departments used a strict selection procedure to compare the features of the market-leading products, and finally chose the test winner at the end of last year: SafeGuard® PDA was most successful in meeting the security concept’s criteria. “From the results of the test and pilot phase we gained valuable ideas concerning future extensions to the functionality, which we have incorporated in the further development of our solution,” said Ansgar Heinen, security expert at Utimaco.

An important criterion for selecting SafeGuard® PDA was the operating costs of the secured devices. As SafeGuard® PDA’s configurable user login, which also allows biometric authentication, means that forgotten passwords are no longer a problem, normal helpdesk costs can be reduced considerably. “We decided in favor of authentication via signature because we had promised ourselves we would keep support costs to an absolute minimum. This has paid off. No users call the helpdesk because they have forgotten their signature”, summed up Sascha Hanke, who is responsible for data protection at Microsoft Deutschland GmbH. During biometric handwriting recognition, the software not only recognizes the user’s writing style, but also the way they write (the “dynamics”). An attacker can only copy this combination of features with extreme difficulty.

You can find more information about SafeGuard® PDA at: http://www.utimaco.com and http://www.utimaco.com/sg-pda.

Utimaco Safeware AG is the leading European manufacturer of professional IT security solutions. The security technology and solutions developed by Utimaco protect the electronic data of companies and government bodies against unauthorized 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, notebook and PDA at the workplace, and on the move.