Gemalto N.V. has teamed up with McAfee Inc. to announce an integrated offering aimed at enabling PC and laptop users secure access to fully encrypted disks.
The joint offering means Gemalto’s .NET smart card and its Smart Enterprise Guardian (SEG) digital security device is fully compatible with McAfee Endpoint Encryption and Total Protection for Data tools. The agreement will allow users of these McAfee products to take advantage of Gemalto smart cards and security tokens to authenticate themselves on their encrypted devices.
McAfee Endpoint Encryption offers full disk encryption, which is transparent to the user and initiated “on the fly.” IT security staff can enable a system to prompt for authentication, before it starts booting or just after it’s finished booting, to protect against potential threats. Users must insert their Gemalto digital security device and enter a PIN before being authorized to access the system data. Both Gemalto and McAfee said the procedure provides the highest levels of security that can only come from a two-factor authentication process.