Educational software for the handicapped

EE January 1986 coder costs about £3000 in the United Kingdom and a separate unit has to be bought for every bank branch and every company computer. However, it is possible to use the computer itself as the encryption system. All that is needed, instead of a "black box", is special software that programs the computer to encode or decode information as it goes into or comes out of the memory. That means companies can ensure the confiden- tiality of their information at only a fraction of the cost and, as the DES code is used, the security is every bit as good. Pion- eering the software ap- proach is a three year old company, JPY Associates of New Malden, which has invented a system called Data-Lock. John Yardley, JPY"s manag- ing director, said: "So far, our customers have wanted to protect either personal data or commer- cially sensitive information. We have had a lot of en- quiries from people developing office auto- mation systems, where they want Data-Lock writ- ten into the s...