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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Saflink Corp. (ESAF) Biometric Software Provider -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael H. Dilley who wrote (4256)	2/12/1999 11:49:00 AM
From: Sheldon C.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4676

Were In Fortune Mag. Let's hope we make a Fortune. HERE IT IS ----------------- Keep Your Secrets Safe With Voice-Activated Software Hot Stuff Michael J. Himowitz We all have secrets, and we keep many of them on the hard disks of our computers. Business plans. Employee evaluations. Income tax returns. Stock portfolios. Love letters. Photos from alt.sex.erotica.barney.duct.tape. All of these secrets are vulnerable to prying eyes. Any hacker worth his salt can turn your network password into toast. Even passwords are useless if you walk away and leave your computer on. So if you really want to make your secret stuff stay that way, take a look at a little $60 program called SaftyLatch from Saflink Corp. of Tampa. It's one of the first affordable biometric security systems on the market, and it keeps your secrets safe by using the sound of your voice to scramble files. If you haven't heard the term before, biometrics is a science that tries to quantify the physical attributes that make each of us unique--our fingerprints, our faces, our retinal patterns, and our voices. Thanks to powerful PCs, it's now possible to use these biometric "signatures" for nearly foolproof identification. Unlike fingerprint or facial systems, which require additional hardware, SaftyLatch requires only that you have a computer running Windows 95/98 with a sound card (the package includes a microphone). When you install it, SaftyLatch asks you to repeat this phrase three times: "My voice is my password." It analyzes the sound and turns it into a unique digital voiceprint. To sign on, you speak the password. If SaftyLatch recognizes your voice, it lets you select any folder on your hard drive for encryption and then scrambles the files inside. You won't notice any difference when you're working because SaftyLatch unscrambles files on the fly. But once you've logged off, any hacker who tries to call up the encrypted documents will see nothing but garbage. This is great if you share a PC with someone at work--or with kids at home. You can also let others set up their own voice-protected folders. The program uses an encryption algorithm called Blowfish, which has 448-bit keys--in other words, it's virtually uncrackable. SaftyLatch also overwrites your original files three times when it encrypts them. The government overwrites a classified hard drive seven times to destroy it, but three times is plenty for you and me--SaftyLatch's precaution will foil anyone rummaging around with tools designed to retrieve deleted files. All this security means you could be locked out too if your sound card dies, you forget your microphone, or a drive failure corrupts SaftyLatch's voiceprint records. That's why it's a good idea to create a "SaftyPin," the publisher's name for a floppy disk that can decrypt your files in an emergency. In practice, all of this worked beautifully. I installed the program on a Gateway laptop with Windows 95 and had no problems. SaftyLatch marked all my encrypted files with an "S." SaftyLatch usually recognized my voice immediately when I logged on. It's smart: I couldn't trick it when I played it a tape of my voice. However, when you log on, you'll want to keep the mike at the distance it was when you recorded your voiceprint. Moving the microphone too close caused the only recognition problems I encountered. All things considered, SaftyLatch is a well-designed and well-executed program that will keep snoops out of your business without inconveniencing you. For information, call Saflink at 800-762-9595 or surf to www.saflink.com. Magazine Issue:Vol. 139, No. 4, March 1, 1999