SECURE IT EASY

Date thieves can’t steal what they can’t get to. That’s the principle behind Secure it Easy, which blocks access to your PC for all USB storage devices except those okayed by an administrator. On install, the software prompts you to examine the list of connected devices and mark those you trust. By default, the program issues alerts when it blocks access, but you can turn that off. The utility can also e-mail you whenever an untrusted device tries to connect.

The product doesn’t block FireWire or PC Card devices, however, and it offers no control over floppy disk, CD or DVD-ROM drives, or other storage devices. Secure it Easy also crashed more than once during testing, and the user interface, while attractive, has some quirks: Trying to change the trusted status of more than one device at a time, for example, may fail which the company acknowledges. On some settings pages, forget to click on Apply, and the changes you’ve made vanish. And other than a PDF manual, you’ll find no context-sensitive or online help system. Secure it Easy runs under Vista, but I’d expect a lot more from this, the most expensive endpoint security product I’ve reviewed.