FOR

The Palm Computing operating system has become ubiquitous in the marketplace, accounting for around 70 percent of PDAs and a growing number of PDA-equipped smartphones in the U.S. It's not difficult to see why, as the firmware occupies a fraction of that needed by Windows CE/Pocket PC applications, but the Palm and Palm-compatible range of Handspring Visor PDAs suffer from the same flaw as all handheld computers do - they're just too portable. In an office environment, the sad fact is that PDAs seem to grow legs and walk off. This is a euphemism for theft, but PDAs seem to fall into the same category as office calculators when it comes to disappearances.

The data on PDAs, however, can be critical, and can be confidential to an organization. Which is where DataGator with its triple-DES encryption enters the frame. Unlike other security software for the Palm that usually rely on password access to various programs, DataGator encrypts all Palm records at their source, using triple-DES algorithms. You can also set the software to offer different levels of security - even down to requesting a password when hotsyncing the Palm with a host computer.

Central to this level of customization are filters, that let users specify exactly which applications should be encrypted. Two versions are available - standard and professional. The former protects the Palm's standard applications (Address, Databook, ToDo and MemoPad), while the latter costs $10 extra but protects records from any application, including some of the later Palm applications that bypass elements of the Palm operating system.

The good news is that the package is cheap, but the bad news is that it slows down the execution of applications on the PDA. Using its default setting on the professional version, which encrypts just about everything on the PDA, the encryption process can take a couple of minutes. Setting up the package - a tedious, but necessary process, especially on older Palm Pilots - speeds this up to a few tens of seconds, which is not that bad. This is despite the fact that DataGator is just over a megabyte big, and appears to have been tightly coded.

We liked the fact that the PC host system software could run under a variety of platforms, including Windows, Apple Mac and Linux, although the latter environments required a manual installation, as the setup program only runs under Windows.

The firm says that the slowness of the encrypt/decrypt cycle is because of the relative slowness of the microprocessors seen in Palm PDAs, when compared to the speedy processors seen in modern PCs. Having watched Windows CE-driven PocketPC machines crawl their way through stripped-down versions of Windows 98/2000 applications, this is perfectly believable, especially since the fastest Palm applications are the ones coded by Palm itself.

There are actually three versions of DataGator supplied on the commercial version of the package - one for the original Palm OS, one for OS versions 3.1 to 3.3 and one for OS version 3.5 and above.

This package won't stop viruses and other malware from attacking your Palm. For that you'll need something like F-Secure's Anti-Virus for Palm OS, which sells for just $25. It was the low price point for F-Secure's software that prompted this writer to do a check on package pricing for the Palm. While serious business applications edged up towards the psychological $100 price barrier, there are an awful lot of applications under the $20 mark.

A quick log on to CompuServe and America Online, meanwhile, revealed a wealth of freeware and shareware applications for the Palm operating system - Palm makes much of this fact in its marketing and, if you search on the web, you can also round up a lot of this free-to-download software relatively easily. This perhaps explains why JAWZ is offering a demonstration version of DataGator on its web site and, if you wanted to be stingy, you could run with just the demo edition. You'd be missing out on JAWZ's excellent customer support and updates, not forgetting the ability to encrypt and decrypt files from just about every Palm application going. Documentation on the software is also excellent, and, if you're a novice, the firm's web site has some excellent resources to get your teeth into without having to dial up the company's support lines.

Some reviews say that DataGator's demo version can get confused by other applications running on the Palm. This is incorrect, as the demo package - like many others - is protected against any 'naughties' by experienced Palm users, so preventing the company's demo software being ripped off.

JAWZ remains confident that DataGator cannot be beaten in the crowded Palm utilities marketplace. Late last year it conducted an analysis of the competition and came up with more than 50 potentially competing packages in the security market, many of them freeware and shareware. The problem with most of the competition, as this writer discovered, was that they either used non-standard encryption algorithms, or required manual stepthroughs at each stage.

The use of non-standard (i.e. non-DES or Blowfish) encryption algorithms is worrying, as there is little chance of being able to verify how powerful (or not) the encryption system is. And, with sub-40-bit DES being crackable on a Pentium 1GHz in under 24 hours (or so we are told), this is a very real worry. It's also important to differentiate DataGator from PKI applications for the Palm, such as RSA's BSAFE and Diversinet's PassPort - DataGator is a self-contained application and provides a complete wall of security around the Palm.

Other packages, such as AutoLock and CIC SignOn, for example, are only logon protection applications, allowing the savvy thief to hotsync up to a host PC to extract the relevant data. Cracker packages for the hotsync application are relatively rare, but they do exist, this writer discovered.

Overall then, the professional version of DataGator gets the thumbs up from this writer. The standard version is perhaps best ignored, as the extra $10 is well worth it for the extra functionality seen on the professional edition.  

SC On-Line
SC Magazine
www.scmagazine.com