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According to Dell, the encryption offered by Dell Data Protection Encryption is Federal Information Process Standards validated, and "provides auditing and regulatory compliance management for industry, federal and state regulations like the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards."
Unlike whole-disk encryption, file-level level encryption does not need to interfere with IT administration, patching, backup or migration.
"Sector-based encryption, which treats encryption as a drive technology, has deployment and other issues," observed Konetski. "Deploying file-based encryption, for example means there is no need to erase disks and to Chkdsk or reformatting on a drive to make sure there are no bad sectors and no data left visible. Backups don't require full decryption, and, Konetski said, "To migrate data for machine end-of-life, or in the event of a catastrophic failure, you simply move files over and transfer the keys. When we developed this product, we had experience in deploying and supporting encryption on endpoints. So we are familiar with the pain points in wanting to do and maintain encryption."
Dell Data Protection Encryption includes compliance templates to help set up policies that comply with the relevant regulations and generate needed reports. According to Dell, the files to be encrypted can be specified, for example, based on end-user profile, data sensitivity and compliance needs.
Volume licensing is available for Dell and non-Dell systems for both Windows and Mac. Through a relationship with Credant, Dell offers optional support for encryption on select smartphones and non-Windows OS. There is also a stand-alone version of the solution that can be used by end-users.
Pricing for the SMB version is $59.99/seat, and includes a local management console. Pricing for the managed enterprise version seats is $85/seat for 1 to 999 seats, including console and client agent.