WinMagic has announced that Mount Sinai Hospital, an internationally recognized health care centre affiliated with the University of Toronto, has selected WinMagic’s SecureDoc full-disk encryption software to protect hospital data. SecureDoc is being installed on more than 200 laptops being utilized by physicians, administrative staff, support staff, clinical staff, IT support staff and researchers.

Having researched available full-disk encryption solutions, Mount Sinai selected SecureDoc based on numerous pre-determined criteria. Mount Sinai’s thorough evaluation process included testing for Windows compatibility, user experience during initial encryption, ongoing performance and user experience following initial encryption, performance and compatibility across a wide variety of laptop models, ability to unencrypt data, data recovery capabilities, ability to support security policy control, client management and monitoring capabilities, auditing and reporting capabilities and preboot authentication functionality.

“SecureDoc provided the best data protection option from a security, ease of use and cost perspective,” said Prateek Dwivedi, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Mount Sinai Hospital. “SecureDoc’s central management console simplifies network security administration while its auditing and reporting capabilities make it easy to set and enforce data security policies,” Dwivedi continued. “Most importantly, as SecureDoc runs transparently in the background it meets all our data security requirements without distracting busy medical staff from their primary objective – providing top quality patient care.”

SecureDoc’s versatile software has made it simple for Mount Sinai to centrally deploy enterprise-class ‘always-on’ full-disk encryption to all its laptop users. And, in the event a staff member is unavailable, or if they have simply forgotten their password, centralized escrow and management of encryption keys ensures critical data can still be accessed – because in urgent situations access to medical data simply cannot wait for a particular person or password.

“Obviously, it is imperative that hospitals protect medical data, but Mount Sinai was equally concerned that the added security should not interfere with patient care,” said Thi Nguyen-Huu, CEO of WinMagic Inc. “Traditionally, ease of use has been adversely impacted by additional security, but SecureDoc’s transparent operation ensures that Mount Sinai’s laptops operate exactly the same with the encryption installed as they did without encryption,” Nguyen-Huu continued. “As a result, Mount Sinai’s medical staff can focus on looking after patients and let SecureDoc look after data security.”

Compatible with all editions of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows Vista, XP, and 2000 as well as Mac and Linux platforms, WinMagic’s SecureDoc protects sensitive data stored on servers, desktops, laptops and removable media, such as USB thumb drives and CD/DVDs. SecureDoc also supports and manages hardware-encrypted disk drives such as the Seagate^® (NYSE: STX) Momentus^® FDE and BlackArmor^™ drives, as well as the upcoming TCG “Opal” specification drives from other leading drive manufacturers. This provides organizations with the flexibility to deploy any combination of hardware and software-based encryption – or transition between the two – with full transparency for end users and a consistent management interface for administrators.

Additionally, SecureDoc simplifies the deployment of any combination of sector-based full-disk encryption, file-and-folder encryption, container encryption and self-extractor encryption. This not only makes it easy for organizations to customize data protection to meet specific security protocols, but also ‘future proofs’ their investment in SecureDoc for Windows, Mac and Linux environments.

Simple and reliable to deploy, SecureDoc provides administrators with powerful centralized management across multiple operating systems and endpoints, leading to superior control and a lower total cost of ownership for the solution.