Washoe County Expanding Its Rollout of DeviceLock Software

DeviceLock, Inc., in endpoint data leak prevention software, announced that customer Washoe County, the second largest and most populated county in the State of Nevada, is expanding its rollout of DeviceLock software to more than 3,000 endpoints across its network of government agencies.

The software has been coupled with Lexar JumpDrive SAFE S3000 USB flash drives, validated for FIPS 140-2 Level 3, which offer AES 256-bit hardware encryption for protection of the sensitive information employees store and transport on work devices in a simple, secure process.

The deployment will ensure the county’s policies, procedures and security technologies are aligned with its data protection goals – ahead of the January 1, 2010 effective date for Nevada’s SB 227 data encryption law. The joint solution allows Washoe County to set a device-access policy that limits employees to connecting only Lexar JumpDrive SAFE S3000 encrypted drives to their office PCs and laptops with rule enforcement executed through DeviceLock’s MMC snap-in interface to Active Directory Group Policy. The combination ensures reliable data protection with industry-leading hardware and software encryption technology.

“Nevada is one of the states with the highest incidents of identity theft, ranking fourth according to a recent Federal Trade Commission report. Washoe County is modelling ‘good security hygiene’ designed to protect Nevadans from this trend,” explains Ira Victor, principal of Data Clone Labs, the security system integrator under contract to Washoe County’s IT department. “Really, the law is catching up with the county, as Washoe has been proactive about setting up data protection policies and technologies for years, and is deploying the DeviceLock/Lexar media solution well ahead of any compliance deadlines.  However, SB 227 does break new ground in that it defines these measures as a set of best practices for protecting personally identifiable information (PII) when it is being moved, both internally – for example, onto removable media like flash drives and CDs or smartphones, iPods or other user devices – as well as over the Internet.  In addition, SB 227 offers the attractive incentive of ‘safe harbor’ from legal pursuit over purported PII leaks to any organization that follows the practices defined in the bill.”

“DeviceLock has been our chosen endpoint DLP security solution for years, but its compatibility with Lexar JumpDrive SAFE S3000 USB flash drives at both the encryption detection layer and unique device ID number layer with its granular whitelisting features really helps us with many levels of compliance as well as security,” comments Christopher Long, CISSP, Chief Security Officer, Washoe County Technology Services. “No other endpoint solution provides this flexibility of encryption integration.”

For organizations of any size and industry, DeviceLock software proactively protects endpoint computers against local data leaks and malware infiltration resulting from insider negligence, accidental mistakes or malicious actions. It enables IT security personnel to precisely control, log, shadow-copy and audit end-user access to all types of local ports and peripheral devices, including personal mobile devices, as well as local and network printers. Complementing its port, device, and data channel-based controls with data type-level security, DeviceLock supports true file type detection and filtering. In addition, DeviceLock blocks operations of USB and PS/2 hardware keyloggers.

Lexar JumpDrive SAFE S3000 drives utilize the most innovative and secure smart card technology trusted by billions of people and thousands of companies and government agencies worldwide in mobile phones, bank cards and government-issued passports. The smart card provides tamper-proof storage of security information, management of all security computations and secure authentication. The mandatory user authentication process blocks unauthorized access to the drives, while the smart card protects data from the various hardware and software attacks that can plague unprotected drives.