DES Is Riding High With New Investors - Jan 2007

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DES is delighted to announce that it has entered into a new relationship with Shackleton Ventures Limited, a secondaries venture capital firm who specialise in direct secondary venture capital funding. The Shackleton Secondaries LP fund (SSLP) has agreed to purchase DES shares from 3i Group plc. The transaction will complete on 9th February 2007.

Hugh Stewart, Managing Partner of Shackleton, comments: "We are extremely impressed by the talent and experience of DES' management team. This coupled with a simple yet incredibly powerful product offering, makes the company an obvious investment choice. We see great market potential for DESLock⁺, the product has received glowing reviews in the media. In addition, DES has a solid base of DESLock⁺ customers and a growing international presence."

DES Announces DK2e - 6th Sep 2006

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DK2e will enable customers to cost-effectively protect embedded system code against piracy or unauthorised use. Additionally, it can be used to simultaneously protect control, monitoring and logging software, running on a controlling host PC. In essence DK2e is a proven way to embed a fully featured dongle into an electronic system.

DK2e is designed to run from a 3.3V power supply. All communications are handled by a two-wire serial interface, ideal for quick system integration with any available microcontroller serial port. The standard DK2 is available in Parallel (LPT) Port, USB and PC Card formats, all of which are functionally identical to the DK2e and may be used for evaluation, development and testing direct from a standard PC. The device is supplied with sample code and full software support direct from DES' development team. DK2e is also available in customer configurations with other PCB (Printed Circuit Board) or system connectors and, if required, can be supplied with RS232 level conversion.

Restriction of Hazardous Substances Regulations - Feb 2006

Download the DES RoHS compliance statment PDF

RoHS - the law in brief 1. The Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2004 ("the RoHS Regulations") implement the provisions of the European Parliament and Council Directive on the Restrictions of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment (2002/95/EC) ("the RoHS Directive").
2. The RoHS Regulations ban the placing on the EU market of new Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) containing more than the set levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium and both polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants from 1 July 2006. There are a number of exempted applications for these substances.
3. Manufacturers will need to ensure that their products - and the components of such products - comply with the requirements of the Regulations by the relevant date in order to be placed on the Single Market. The Regulations will also have an impact on those who import EEE into the European Union on a professional basis, those who export to other Member States and those who rebrand other manufacturers' EEE as their own.
4. These Regulations do not affect the application of existing legal requirements for EEE, including those regarding safety, the protection of health, existing transport requirements or provisions on hazardous waste. In other words, existing legislation on EEE and hazardous substances must also be complied with.

USB key added to the DK2 family - 1 May 2003

A USB key has recently been added to the DK2 family of software protection devices which has all of the functionality of the DK2 Parallel Port device and comes in the same format as the existing DK3 USB. The new device extends the availability of the DK2 onto a greater variety of platforms whilst maintaining compatibility with existing software. With the exception of possibly installing new drivers (DK2 USB support was added to the 5.09.0.83 install) no software changes should be necessary. Software written to work with the DK2 parallel port key or DK38 (also known as the DK2 PC Card) should also work with a similarly coded DK2USB. The DK2 USB will work on any Windows OS that has inbuilt USB support (98, ME, 2000 or XP.)

Contact our Sales team for pricing and availability information.

DK3USB support for Macintosh - 25, January 2002

With the diminishing availability of Apple Desktop Bus, making the DK8 unsuitable for many modern machines, Data Encryption System is pleased to announce DK3 USB support for MacOS. The DK3 USB, released during the Spring of last year, has already become a favoured choice for many Windows developers and is being used to satisfy a variety of software protection requirements. With the availability and popularity of USB on all new Macintosh systems the DK3 USB is the perfect choice for fast and secure protection against unlicensed use.

A new DESkey Framework, which supports the DK3 USB, is now available from Data Encryption Systems which allows Macintosh applications to access the DK3 USB. The Framework supports Mac OS X 10.1 or later. To aid portability and familiarity with the DK3 USB, the API used in the DESkey Framework is based on the current DESkey API already used under Windows platforms.

A Cocoa demo written in Objective C for Mac OS X is also available to demonstrate the DK3 USB functionality.

Doing it the DES way - November 2001

Article in the Application Development Advisor Security Supplement (November 2001)

When Data Encryption System's own consultants recognised the need for a secure system that could protect PCs with the minimum of fuss, it tackled the problem head on by developing one itself.

View the full article (PDF - 83Kb)