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PGP Questions

Hello all,
I am a newbie at PGP and have a few questions and am not sure which zone to put this question under.
I know that in a HIPAA compliant environment you want to have PGP on both the client and the server in a LAN area so that communication between the client and the server is encrypted.
My questions, for a HIPAA facility, are:
1) Does PGP create an overhead on the PCs that makes the PCs slow?
2) I know that Symantec has PGP software. Are there any other PGP software out there that works well?
3) What if you have a client that just has PCs with no file server on their LAN, does PGP software work the same and is it worth it to have it on those PCs?
Thanks,
Kelly W.

Rich Rumble

PGP has a suite of encryption tools, PGP started out doing encrypted emails, PGP does not do network encryption itself, it encrypts the data in an email before being sent. Encrypted network communications are typically done via tunneling, vpn or using dedicated encryption gateways. If you send a PGP email to someone without a PGP client, they will not be able read the encrypted email. Emails can also be signed with a hash that can be used to verify if the message has been tampered with, but does not prevent anyone from reading it.
There are other encryption suites and solutions, Cisco has an encrypted email solution that is superior to pgp in that it does not require the exchange of public keys, and it does not require an email client or 3rd party software to understand any encryption. http://www.ironport.com/
Even if using whole disk encryption, if you copy a file to a server that does not have encryption the file is plain-text/not-encrypted when sent to it's destination, this also applies technically when sending between two computers that do have disk encryption... the data on the wire is plain-text, but is written to the disc as encrypted data.
-rich

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K_Wilke

ASKER

Exactly what I was looking for....thank you.