Ram & Reason Lockdown E-mail with SecureBat! Pro

    by Rob Rice    January 2004                 

 

SecureBat!As computing and the Internet come under increasing security, e-mail has also been gaining its share of scrutiny. A weak link in computing’s armor; companies and individuals have been stepping up their defenses and locking down e-mail with everything from fingerprint scanners to smart card readers. These are great for desktop security at well-funded companies, but what about laptops or the home user with limited resources? Well, one solution is SecureBat! Pro by Ritlabs.

 

A standalone e-mail client, SecureBat! Pro is the popular The Bat! e-mail client fortified with hardware authentication and transparent, on-the-fly encryption of the e-mail message base, address books and configuration files.

 

What sets SecureBat! Pro apart from the competition is the iKey 1000 token. This is a microprocessor, memory, and a USB controller all within a small purple device that looks like a flash drive. The iKey token acts as an electronic key that unlocks SecureBat! Pro when inserted into a USB port. Remove the device and SecureBat! Pro becomes inaccessible.

iKey 1000 token

SecureBat! Pro can also use the similar eToken Pro by Aladdin. As to which you use, the Rainbow Technologies iKey 1000 token or the eToken Pro by Aladdin is dependent on which version of SecureBat! Pro you order. SecureBat! Pro Lite is also available which does not use any hardware token.

 

Some of the features of SecureBat! Pro are as follows (from the Ritlabs Website):

 

 

Installation was not difficult, but one must follow directions in the securebat-install.txt if you expect a successful setup. Our version uses the Rainbow iKey1000 so we will describe the installation for it. Setup for the Aladdin eToken and Lite versions may be different.

 

There are actually three stages to installing SecureBat! Pro with the Rainbow iKey1000: First, ensure that you've installed the iKey driver (iKeyDriver344.exe on our disk) and have rebooted. Failure to do this will only result in hitting a brick wall in the e-mail setup process later on.

 

Second, install and configure the Token Manager (TokenMgrSetup.exe). Configuring the Token Manager is perhaps the lengthiest part of the install process. Read the notices which appear during the Token Manager installation and then insert the iKey token into an available USB port and run the Token Activation Utility.

 

Finally, install SecureBat! Pro and configure your e-mail addresses. One important note from the install text is worth remembering:

 

Once installed, Ritlabs SecureBat! Pro is permanently tied to the User Name of a specific ID, and it is not possible to reassign another ID to the existing Ritlabs SecureBat! Pro. The 128-bit encryption key from the assigned ID is used for on-the-fly encryption of Ritlabs SecureBat! Pro operations.

 

The SecureBat! Pro e-mail client does have a few presets that may be annoying to some, such as automated templates. In their default settings your e-mails take on an air of  formality which can cause friends and family to wonder if you are really the one sending the message. They also start the reply to a message at the bottom instead of the top of an e-mail which may be irritating to some. Still, all of these can be re-configured through Options and a right-click menu.

 

SecureBat! Pro is more expensive, takes longer and requires a more involved setup than most e-mail clients. Is it worth the extra money and hassle? You bet! According to a June 2003 article in SC magazine, 80 to 95 percent of the corporate world still uses password protection, but recognizing the limitations of using passwords they are beginning to seriously explore other options such as the two-factor authentication found in SecureBat!  Pro.

 

So, why all the fuss over passwords, after all they have been used for years? Let’s face it, passwords are a pain. We spend loads of time trying to circumvent the system and remember numerous and often difficult passwords. Plus passwords are often easy to crack. Keystroke loggers, lunchroom discussions about passwords, or, simply watching over a shoulder are typical ways a thief cracks a password. As SC Magazine points out, a walk through almost any office will reveal passwords written on sticky notes and stuck on monitors, or underneath keyboards. Some are even written on blackboards. Yet, with SecureBat’s hardware token, even if a thief does crack your password the crook still does not have access to your e-mail, minimizing damage done from a stolen laptop, for example.

 

The SecureBat! Pro interface is clean and intuitive. The templates feature, which I originally found to be irritating, is actually quite useful once you discover the right-click menu that allows you to customize them. One feature that I particularly like is the Message Dispatcher which is a window reminiscent of Mail Washer (See author’s review in the eMonitor Dec 2003). E-mails can be viewed and deleted from the mail server without ever downloading them to your computer, a real plus in avoiding viruses and trojans.

 

SecureBat! Pro

SecureBat! Pro allows you to import messages from the following mail clients:

 

 

Address books can be imported in the following formats:

 

 

An upcoming version of SecureBat! Pro features import of Outlook message base, Microsoft Outlook contacts and Outlook Express (Windows) address book.

 

SecureBat! Pro has a list of features that are impressive. Features beyond those already mentioned include: Mailing lists with the full subscribe/unsubscribe functionality, antivirus protection and malicious script protection, junk mail filters, backup and restore, the ability to synchronize with other copies of The Bat! and SecureBat! Pro, internal PGP implementation, support for S/MIME compressed data manager and for digital keys are included. If that were not enough, free plugins for PGP v5.5, v6.0.2, 6.5, v7.x & v8.x GnuPG are available and it also supports S/MIME via Internal Implementation or Microsoft CryptoAPI. A message ribbon moves across the screen alerting you when an e-mail has been received by the server and disappears when the message has been read. The language option allows you to change the interface language “on the fly” without the need to restart the program. A notepad, calendar and scheduler are also provided under the SmartBat option.

 

The Sorting Office is an interesting feature. It is a filtering system that not only sorts incoming, outgoing, read, and replied messages to folders, but also can auto-respond using a custom template. Moreover, it can forward, redirect, print, or export messages, send reading confirmations, or run an external program as well.

 

About the only complaint that I have with SecureBat! Pro is that the logo tricks me into thinking that it is Halloween all year. Aside from the aesthetics, SecureBat! Pro with the Rainbow iKey1000 is a nice program. Stable, secure, and fast, I found that after only two days use I was ready to retire my old e-mail client of the past four years and use SecureBat! Pro exclusively. SecureBat! Pro is an excellent solution, providing strong e-mail security and access protection with all of the ease and familiarity of a popular e-mail client. I highly recommend it!

 

 

Version 2.01.31 reviewed with Rainbow iKey1000.

 

SecureBat! Pro from Ritlabs, http://www.ritlabs.com/

SecureBat! Pro with Rainbow iKey1000, $140 (shipped from the U.S., iKey1000 token included).

SecureBat! Pro with Aladdin eToken PRO, shipped from Germany $141.06.

SecureBat! Pro Lite (Does not use a hardware token) $76.94.

 

SC Magazine, Illena Armstrong, “Passwords Exposed: Users are the weakest link,” June 2003, http://www.scmagazine.com/index2.html,

 

The eMonitor, Rob Rice, “Scrubbing Spam with MailWasher Pro 3.3,” December 2003,

http://www.okcpcug.com/

 

Rob Rice is a member of the Oklahoma City PC User’s Group and a computer specialist in the Oklahoma City area. You can contact Rob at, articles@highstream.net