WinVista Software now in South Africa

Holton & Associates, today announced that it had secured the Southern African rights to distribute the software products of WinVista Corporation that cover the areas of desktop security and management, and which potentially forms part of any company`s "good corporate governance" policy.

Until recently, most monitoring, blocking and lockdown programs have been introduced at the peripheral side of the computer network (firewall or servers) with a somewhat restrictive, impractical and inefficient result, whereby users either accept a global setting (where everyone fits into one user group) or no setting at all. WinVista Pro is the only product that has the proactive approach of doing monitoring, blocking and lockdown of applications at the desktop, where absolute flexibility is required. Each user is allocated to one of many User Groups wherein that user`s requirements are set to suit, and allow he/she to do their daily work efficiently.

Today`s corporations are scrambling to deal with the Windows Desktop explosion, and IT organisations are being forced to address unprecedented technology growth, accelerating complexity of the desktop, escalating user demand and control, coupled with insufficient staffing levels.

Factors that contribute to efficiently setting and managing IT Decisions:

• Protecting directors and staff from pornography, paedophilic and racist pictures.

• Preventing users downloading and running malicious programs such as password crackers, hacking tools, credit card generators etc.

• Monitoring and controlling users whilst Internet browsing by setting only allowable Web sites for a particular user group (not Global Setting).

• Maximising productive time spent by users on a day to day basis.

• Difficulty in projecting resource utilisation.

• Completing rollouts on schedule and on budget.

• Identifying and enforcing effective corporate IT standards.

• Rising costs due to labour-intensive support requirements.

• Inefficient application deployment.

• Unnecessary acquisitions or upgrades.

• Ineffective training programs.

• Substantial risk of unauthorised exposure to application or private data use.

These result in an ever-increasing Total Cost of Ownership. WinVista Pro helps bring down these costs of managing today`s Windows desktop environment by providing the corporation the ability to make key strategy decisions based on current and accurate information, validating chosen directions over time, enforcing policy standards, and increasing user satisfaction and productivity.

The product range includes:

• S to Infinity, a product that potentially protects a company and its directors from possible legal action against them, the loss of the company`s reputation by the behaviour of its staff, or from labour action by staff for supposed racist or sexual harassment activities. Private Information is protected through disabling access to almost any resource, encrypt files or folders with strong encryption capability and remove icons from appearing in Explorer.

• EGuard, a product that has a very powerful feature to ensure that a user can only visit websites as set in the favourites in Internet Explorer. This feature provides a unique solution to the problems of dealing with the unwanted features of the Internet. Any menu item or toolbar button in Explorer or Internet Explorer can be disabled, and, for example, cookies, history and the cache can be automatically cleared each time Internet Explorer is closed.

• Fenris, a product that allows a user to password protect his/her Notebook, or Desktop computer`s hard disk. Unless the correct password is entered, the disk becomes inaccessible even if the system is re-booted from a floppy disk/CD. Attempting to format the hard drive after re-booting from a floppy/CD will also fail, giving extra data protection.

• Should a user purchase the S to Infinity product, EGuard and Fenris are also included at no additional charge; however, EGuard and Fenris can be bought separately.

• WinVista Pro, a product that provides an audit of hardware and software in use on each computer, as well as an accurate view of how that software, hardware and data assets are being utilised, whilst enforcing corporate Governance and IT policies to prevent actions that are detrimental to the corporation.

"With the increasing use by staff of the Internet for their day to day activities, there is a growing need for an organisation to examine its "Corporate Governance Policy" and take appropriate steps to protect itself", commented Grayford Holton, Managing Director of Holton and Associates.