Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) willpresent several new open source-based desktop and securityapplications on Wednesday at a local Linux event.
The applications include an e-mail encryption tool for Windowsusers, a security suite for the public and private sectors, anddesktop systems for public administrations, BSI said Tuesday.
The GNU Privacy Guard for Windows (gpg4win) application is basedon the free software GnuPG, designed to enable data encryption andeasy integration with other applications, including MicrosoftCorp.’s Outlook 2003. The software, available for free under termsof the GNU General Public License, can be used not only by publicadministrations and businesses but also by consumers.
The product is available for download at: http://www.gpg4win.de.
BSI’s open source security suite (BOSS) allows public andprivate sector organizations to centrally monitor the security oftheir entire IT networks. The application is based largely on theopen source scanner Nessus and the tool Security Local AuditingDaemon (SLAD), designed to perform local security checks againstGNU/Linux systems.
The product is available for download at: http://www.bsi.bund.de/produkte/boss/index.htm#download.
As part of the government-funded Experiment with Open SourceSoftware (ERPOSS) project, which aims to make open source softwaremore easy to install and use by public administrations, BSI andCredative GmbH collaborated to make the ERPOSS4 desktopapplication. The application, based on the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1operating system and KDE 3.3 graphic interface, includesOpenOffice, KMail with integrated virus and spam protection and theMozilla Firefox browser, as well as a preconfigured personalfirewall.
The product is available at: http://www.bsi.bund.de/produkte/erposs/index.htm.
Most of the information about the BSI products is in Germanonly, but the agency points out that because of the input frominternational groups, some information is also available inEnglish.
English-language information about BSI is available at: http://www.bsi.bund.de/english/index.htm.
The agency will present the open source applications at theLinuxTag conference and exhibition, which runs from May 3-6 inWiesbaden, Germany.