ZoneAlarm’s DataLock: BitLocker for the Rest of Us

By  |  Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:52 pm

If you’re supercautious about protecting your PC’s data from prying eyes–especially when it comes to a laptop that might get lost–you could use Windows 7’s BitLocker disk encryption to secure every last file. But BitLocker only comes with Windows’ two priciest versions, Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate. Encryption, Microsoft clearly thinks, is of interest mostly to big-business types and hardcore users.

Enter DataLock, a new utility from Check Point Software’s ZoneAlarm division. Like Bit-Locker, it does full-drive encryption–the whole thing gets locked up, and you have to enter a password before the boot process starts to get access to Windows and your data. Unlike BitLocker, DataLock is aimed at consumers and small businesses, with a price to match: $19.95 (an introductory price–list is $29.95). And just in case you encrypt your drive and then forget the password–hey, I’ll bet it’s been know to happen–the software comes with a phone-based password recovery service that’s available 24/7.

DataLock was announced this week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, and is available now as a download from ZoneAlarm’s site.

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. Dan Says:
    March 3rd, 2010 at 8:51 am

    If there is a phone based recovery, isn’t that basically a backdoor around the encryption?

  2. Marc Says:
    March 3rd, 2010 at 11:46 am

    I have setup TrueCrypt on about 10 different laptops and it’s a piece of cake. It’s also open source and free, and doesn’t seem to impact on performance. I cannot see how this is worth the money.

  3. Steve Says:
    March 8th, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    Why would anyone trust their encrption to ZoneAlarm?

  4. Drew Says:
    April 6th, 2010 at 10:37 am

    Marc, the biggest issue I’ve seen with TrueCrypt is lack of any key escrow. Basically this means if a user forgets their password the system is hosed. In most cases this is unacceptable in corporate environments.

  5. Terry Anderson Says:
    September 21st, 2011 at 2:04 am

    "Marc, the biggest issue I've seen with TrueCrypt is lack of any key escrow. Basically this means if a user forgets their password the system is hosed. In most cases this is unacceptable in corporate environments."

    LOL no, thats why the it staff has the recovery cd.