Pervasive upgrades database security -- ADTmag

Pervasive upgrades database security

By Will Kilburn
July 23, 2003

Pervasive Software, Austin, Texas, has started shipping a beta version of a set of security updates to its Pervasive.SQL database. Called Pervasive.SQL V8 Security, the new package is designed to keep up with the security needs of increasingly regulated industries such as health care, retail and accounting.

"The focus on this product was to take our security product to the next level," said Suaad Sait, Pervasive's vice president of marketing. "What we've done is taken the security model and made it unified across all different access methods, such that people can have authentication authorization that can happen across the application to a single login."

The upgrade, explained Sait, can be made without changing code, and is backwards-compatible with existing Btrieve and Pervasive.SQL applications. Security is provided by a proprietary encryption method at the disk level, while 128-bit Blowfish encryption is said to keep data secure "on the wire." The company is offering the beta version for free to current Pervasive customers, and Sait said the company will be carefully watching over the testing cycle as it gets the package ready for its general release date sometime later this calendar year.

"This will be a paid upgrade for everyone who hasn't purchased Version 8 already," said Sait, who added that users of pre-V8 versions of the database can still download and test the beta version. "People who have purchased Version 8 and want [the new] security features will be able to download the product from our Web site."

For more information on the Pervasive.SQL V8 Security beta download, click on www.pervasive.com/security

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