With security becoming a prime concern in organizations, ways and means for securing documents for local storage and also during transmission across the Internet are being sought after. Digital signatures and encryption technologies are tools that are being used for the purpose. E-Lock Assured Office is an application that lets you do just that, using PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)-based digital signature technology.

To use this product, you need to have your own digital certificate. A 90-day trial certificate can be downloaded from the E-Lock Technologies Website—www. elock.com. Once you get your certificate through e-mail, you need to install it by contacting the Website again. Security starts right here. An installed certificate is resident in one particular machine itself and can’t be transferred to any other PC. You can now install the software.

The installation adds its options to the right-click menu on the desktop, and in Windows Explorer. You can choose to digitally sign documents, encrypt them, or do both from either of these locations.

You can also opt to create policies and profiles. Policies allow you to use multiple certificates while signing. You can also enforce conditions on signing so that all documents are signed using a particular certificate only. Using profiles, multiple users on the same workstation can create separate profiles based on the CSP (Cryptographic Service Provider), Hash algorithm used, and the certificate used. This helps in ensuring authenticity of the document. However, if you use a policy in your profile, any manual settings that you’ve made in the profile are overridden. You can also change your encryption preferences to use different CSP and encryption algorithms.

All in all, it takes a bit of time to understand the process at first. But it’s quite easy to use after that. Also, knowledge of encryption schemes and algorithms will help you get more out of E-Lock.

Ashish Sharma at PCQ Labs