Security gets new lease of life

Pro

1 April 2005

Dublin-based security specialist, Entropy, is offering the full range of its services through a finance package whereby companies can pay a flat fee on a monthly or quarterly basis rather than a single upfront payment. 

For example, a project costed at €15,000 for 200 users over three years — which tends to be the typical lifetime of such a deal — works out at just over €2 per month per user under a leasing arrangement. 

Leasing arrangements allow companies to keep their operating capital free for other elements of the business instead of having to use cash to pay for certain services, such as IT. Such schemes have become especially attractive of late, at a time when the need for security is growing, but when the purse-strings for IT spending are tightly held. 

According to Entropy’s sales and marketing director John Ryan, leasing arrangements are particularly appropriate to growing organisations. 

Network security can also raise the issue of how to justify the return on investment, he pointed out. ‘It’s more like an insurance policy than a capital expenditure, so what if you could pay for it in the same way as an insurance policy?’

The Entropy scheme is being underwritten by the London-based leasing specialist Syscap. Since it was announced, Entropy has been approached by the Dublin finance house Woodchester, although at press time, the companies had yet to agree a formal deal.

Entropy is recommending two main components as the entry level service: a firewall and content screening for e-mail and the Web. The next option is a virtual private network for customers with multiple sites. There is also a service for companies with mobile workers, who need to be authenticated before they access files remotely. 

A possible spinoff effect from the plan is that it may help to promote public key infrastructure (PKI) technology to a sector of the market that had not embraced it previously. 

The challenge with PKI is that it is perceived as being an enormously cumbersome project and suitable only for enterprise users, said Ryan. ‘In fact we have sites of 100 users who find it easy to manage. It’s a solution for many problems: encrypting documents, securing and digitally signing e-mail, or providing digital certificates for dial-up access to a company network.’

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