Currently, DataGator is available for North American users only (according to information at PalmGear), due to its strong encryption. I was under the impression that strong encryption was now exportable to the countries who have signed the Wassenaar Arrangement. These countries are Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the USA. If you work in any of these countries or if you work for a multinational organization, you may want to check with JAWZ to determine whether or not they'll be able to deploy this application internationally.

Although it's well-designed and well-intentioned, I can't fully recommend DataGator at this time. The lack of a companion application for desktop encryption is a major flaw that JAWZ should have been well aware of if they were monitoring the Palm computing newsgroups. Also, the price of the Standard edition is a little bit steep for protecting only the built-in applications. Security is an enormously important issue for handheld enterprise computing. DataGator shows signs of heading in the right direction, but it's not the ultimate solution we've been waiting for.

Deen Ferrell is Vice President of Business Development at Blue Squirrel. Over the past year, he has been responsible for developing strong industry partnerships with corporations like Franklin Covey, Eastman Kodak, OhFish Communications, McGraw Publishing, and AI Soft Inc. (Seiko/Epson's Japan subsidiary). He is a Brigham Young University graduate and completed additional studies at USC's prestigious Annenberg School for Communications. He currently resides in Tooele, Utah with his wife and three children. He can be reached via email at deenf@bluesquirrel.com.