To control access, GFI EndPointSecurity installs a small footprint agent on the machine. This agent is only 1.2 MB in size – the user will never know it is there. GFI EndPointSecurity includes a remote deployment tool based on GFI LANguard technology, allowing you to deploy the agent to hundreds of machines with just a few clicks. After installation, the agent queries Active Directory when the user logs on and sets permissions to the different nodes accordingly. If the user is not a member of a group that allows him/her access, then access to the device is blocked.

USB sticks are one of the main threats as they are small, easily hidden and can store up to 4 GB of data. GFI EndPointSecurity recognizes USB storage sticks in addition to any device that can be mounted as a hard disk (whether accessed via USB, FireWire, etc.). For example, plugging a digital camera into a USB port gives users access to storage on an SD card; SD cards are available in several sizes including 2 GB and over.

You can centrally disable users from reading or writing data to/from a CD or floppy. This way, you can block normal users from bringing in data that could be harmful to your network, such as viruses, trojans and other malware. Although you can switch off CD and/or floppy access from the BIOS, in reality this solution is impractical: You would have to physically visit the machine to temporarily switch off protection and install software. In addition, advanced users can hack the BIOS.

GFI EndPointSecurity protects your network against non-removable media devices by allowing you to lock down a machine to a specific hardware level, guaranteeing protection against Bluetooth devices, network cards and more.

You can configure and categorize computers into different protection groups: For each group you may specify different levels of protection and devices to allow or disallow access to. You can also leverage the power of groups and make an entire department a member of the group and easily change the settings for the entire group. Configuration of GFI EndPointSecurity is effortless and leverages the power of Active Directory and does not require the administrator to remember and keep track of which policies were deployed to which computers. Other storage control software requires cumbersome per-machine administration, forcing you to make the changes on a per-machine basis and update the configuration on each machine before the settings can take effect.

Configure whether a user should be granted read/write access or both access capabilities for the following types of devices: Removable media, CD, DVD, floppies and other devices running a file system.

With GFI EndPointSecurity you can log device-related user activity to both the event log and a central SQL Server. A list of files accessed to/from the device is recorded whenever users plug in devices both successfully and unsuccessfully.

The GFI EndPointSecurity remote deployment tool can deploy the agent network-wide in a few minutes. You can configure to deploy domain-wide, per computer or to a list of computers.

Because you can easily add/remove a user to a group in Active Directory, it is simple to grant temporary access to a removable media, floppy or CD. Temporary access may be occasionally required, but should not mean that you cannot control access the rest of the time.

• Support for operating systems in any Unicode-compliant language