Use Dongle Protection to Secure Your Software From Piracy
The world today is truly flat, as Thomas Friedman maintains in his book The World is Flat.
While global trade and commerce have improved the lives of many people and opened markets to many businesses, a flat earth and easy access to the Internet has regrettably made it much easier to steal intellectual property (IP).
Whether designs for products like clothes and luggage, books, music, movies, or even software, counterfeiting and piracy of IP is rampant in many developing nations.
Today a criminal or unscrupulous individual anywhere in the world can attack the IP of companies anywhere else in the world via the Internet.
A common attack is to download illegal copies of commercial software and use them without paying for them.
These copies are "cracked" by tech-savvy individuals who figure out how to defeat the software publisher's copy protection and licensing provisions.
Software publisher or independent software vendors (ISVs) can prevent this kind of illegal theft through dongle protection.
How Does Dongle Protection Work? Dongle protection prevents illegal copying by storing a key that is used to decrypt the software when the user starts it up.
The software was previously encrypted by the ISV and shipped to the user in an encrypted form.
Only when it is decrypted on startup can it run on the user's computer.
Strong encryption like AES 128-bit is used commonly for secure communications and financial transaction because its strength makes it uncrackable.
Dongle protection ensures that the key for decryption is securely stored against attacks from pirates and crackers.
When an ISV uses dongle protection correctly, the threat of software piracy is reduced or eliminated altogether.
The word "dongle" usually refers to a small electronic device that plugs into a USB port on a laptop, desktop computer, or server.
It looks like a flash drive.
The strongest protection is afforded when the device contains a smart card chip, onboard memory, and has a secure case to protect against physical attacks.
A dongle can only provide strong security when it is used correctly, which must include encrypting the communications between the dongle and the computer's operating system (OS).
Dongles can protect IP besides commercial software, including PDFs, music and video files, and access to websites.
In addition to the common USB form factor, dongle protection is also available on SD, Micro SD, and compact flash (CF) cards.
Micro SD (μSD) and CF cards are popular for applications in embedded systems, as are ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) chips with the hardware protection built in.
Why Choose Dongle Protection? Dongles can provide extremely strong security against IP theft, but they carry additional costs that are both financial (you have to pay for the dongle and add that to the cost of your software product) as well as convenience (the user must have the dongle for the software to run).
Used properly, dongle protection can provide unsurpassable levels of security against illegal copying of software, data files, music, and video.
Used improperly, dongles can provide the illusion of protection without strong security.
While global trade and commerce have improved the lives of many people and opened markets to many businesses, a flat earth and easy access to the Internet has regrettably made it much easier to steal intellectual property (IP).
Whether designs for products like clothes and luggage, books, music, movies, or even software, counterfeiting and piracy of IP is rampant in many developing nations.
Today a criminal or unscrupulous individual anywhere in the world can attack the IP of companies anywhere else in the world via the Internet.
A common attack is to download illegal copies of commercial software and use them without paying for them.
These copies are "cracked" by tech-savvy individuals who figure out how to defeat the software publisher's copy protection and licensing provisions.
Software publisher or independent software vendors (ISVs) can prevent this kind of illegal theft through dongle protection.
How Does Dongle Protection Work? Dongle protection prevents illegal copying by storing a key that is used to decrypt the software when the user starts it up.
The software was previously encrypted by the ISV and shipped to the user in an encrypted form.
Only when it is decrypted on startup can it run on the user's computer.
Strong encryption like AES 128-bit is used commonly for secure communications and financial transaction because its strength makes it uncrackable.
Dongle protection ensures that the key for decryption is securely stored against attacks from pirates and crackers.
When an ISV uses dongle protection correctly, the threat of software piracy is reduced or eliminated altogether.
The word "dongle" usually refers to a small electronic device that plugs into a USB port on a laptop, desktop computer, or server.
It looks like a flash drive.
The strongest protection is afforded when the device contains a smart card chip, onboard memory, and has a secure case to protect against physical attacks.
A dongle can only provide strong security when it is used correctly, which must include encrypting the communications between the dongle and the computer's operating system (OS).
Dongles can protect IP besides commercial software, including PDFs, music and video files, and access to websites.
In addition to the common USB form factor, dongle protection is also available on SD, Micro SD, and compact flash (CF) cards.
Micro SD (μSD) and CF cards are popular for applications in embedded systems, as are ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) chips with the hardware protection built in.
Why Choose Dongle Protection? Dongles can provide extremely strong security against IP theft, but they carry additional costs that are both financial (you have to pay for the dongle and add that to the cost of your software product) as well as convenience (the user must have the dongle for the software to run).
Used properly, dongle protection can provide unsurpassable levels of security against illegal copying of software, data files, music, and video.
Used improperly, dongles can provide the illusion of protection without strong security.
