Defence encrypts whole laptop fleet

Australia's Department of Defence is midway through the process of deploying hard disk encryption technology to its entire fleet of 25,000 laptops, it was revealed today.

Defence selected software from Pointsec Mobile Technologies in May for the task, the vendor's local managing director Sandeep Joshi told ZDNet Australia via telephone this morning, noting the software deployment had so far reached some 15,000 of Defence's total of 25,000 laptops.

"That is mammoth," said Joshi. "That is the biggest customer you can get in the whole region here. This is probably one of the things that we liked about Defence, they didn't go half-hearted. If they want to do something, they go the whole hog."

Pointsec has only been operating in Australia since September 2004.

The managing director said to Pointsec's knowledge, Defence had no previous deployment of hard disk encryption technology on its laptop fleet, and was one of the first major government departments to mandate use of the technology.

Defence staffers who didn't want Pointsec on their machines had to apply for an exemption directly to the department's office of the chief information officer, he said.

Joshi said Defence evaluated a number of other vendors, with the decision to pick Pointsec being influenced by the fact it was the only vendor with a mobile data protection solution certified to the Common Criteria EAL4 level. Pointsec's software has been approved by the Defence Signals Directorate for use in Australian and New Zealand government systems.