Data privacy
Data security wanted
Usually it is only one line, only a small slot, in which one types one or several terms of definitions, using your keyboard and within a split second you have a hit list. It started on 9.7.1998 in a garage and was called Google, and has by now found the way through the Internet onto plenty of personal computers. But what is the price? The big search engines like Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft charge us with our personal data dearly for their services.
The current, very heated, debate to enforce a better protection for personal data, reaches a new dimension in view of the desktop search. Because it is the desktop search that is actually saving personal data and knowledge of business companies on their own servers right from the start. For example, Google desktop search even speaks explicit in the GTA about saving data on external servers. The index is first generated on the personal computer and then will be send to Google. What happens there with the data, nobody knows. But it isn’t over there. Because a personalization takes place at latest, when the Google mail account and the Gmail account is involved as well. This option can be deactivated on installing, if you pay keen attention, but who does so in the modern “click next” generation?
Everyone wants our data
But it’s not just Google who wants our Data. Apples Spotlight, Microsoft and Yahoos desktop search is also rather keen on the personal bits and bytes. If you look at this data saving, over exaggerating a bit, then you will find at latest when companies are involved, that, should the data get into the wrong hands, this could be disastrous and even cause the ruin of a company. Of course, Google has no interest to hand over data to third persons, but wasn’t it the USA, that thought, currently on Wikileaks published data was save? And we all know what happened.
So one is allowed to think about the worst case scenario, considering all the affairs around data that occurred lately. Because, if you transport such an affair to the business level, then it is time and it is appropriate to be very concerned.
Companies save design studies, plans, bank data, information about employees and plans for prototypes. That is a lot of sensitive data, which needs to be protected and shouldn’t be laying on some servers somewhere in the USA. That is one of the best reasons why companies shouldn’t use this kind of search engines. But not all search engines work like that. Lookeen can help you.
Lookeen is different
And right here the line will be written, where the desktop search from Lookeen has to be mentioned. Because, aside the well known E-Mail search function in Outlook, Lookeen is able to serve as a desktop search as well. It searches and sets up an index, without a search engine cant function, but now the difference comes into effect. And you better believe it; the complete index is only saved on the local personal computer, aka your own personal computer that has started the search. In thus the data remains with the owner and won’t go wandering to far away servers of companies that aren’t transparent and that no one has control over.
Photo: Markus Henkel
We set a high value on making the installation of Lookeen as easy and flexible as possible. This is no problem for single-user-installations: You run the setup.exe, choose a path and after that Lookeen will already be installed.
When you run Outlook after that, the Lookeen-Wizard will help you to add the desired mailboxes to the index and then you will already be able to use Lookeen on your workstation.
Above that Lookeen helps your company to fight the constantly increasing flood of emails.
For the installation within a company’s environment (regardless whether it concerns 20 or 20,000 workstations), flexibility is a decisive factor. In this case, the introduction of a fundamental tool like Lookeen naturally has to be planned well and in a structured way.
The system administrator has to find out which network resources are required for that and which settings or rather restrictions have to be made for the individual users.
The administrator regulates these settings and restrictions with the help of the so-called “Group Policies” (“GPOs” in short).
These group policies are totally indispensable for the integration in a company’s environment.
Sadly not all programmes and tools support group policies. This is why the most successful website in the field of group policies (www.gruppenrichtlinien.de) introduced the TROST-prize („Tja, Rein Optisch Schönes Tool“-prize; which means a prize for a tool which only seems to be good but it is not if you look at it more closely): A “prize” for programmes, which do not function with restricted user authorisations and do not support GPOs.
Therefore we have known from the beginning: In order to make it possible to “roll-out” Lookeen companywide, Lookeen group policies have to be developed. This amount of work should not be underestimated.
The required efforts and especially the error sources caused in a company without group policies are simply unacceptable.
The installation itself is only a part of the integration (of the roll-out) in a company. Afterwards the workstations have to be set up in a personnel-suitable way.
Assuming that you have just installed the software on 500 workstations, hopefully without any problems, the software is not just yet ready to be used only because the installation has been completed. To be honest: Do you want to make sure afterwards that the new software works properly and can be used efficiently when 500 employees with completely different backgrounds and expertise use it?
The administrator is able to control for example the following points with the help of GPOs:
- The including of shared index sources
- The periods of times during which Lookeen indexes the data stock
- The adding of outlook archives, local folders and network folders
- The handling of automatic updates
We, the Lookeen-team, have been engaged in the development of GPOs for a long time and in an extensive way. However, it was worth the time and efforts. Thus this precisely makes Lookeen today so desirable and comfortable for a lot of companies and their system administrators, regarding the central controlling.
At this point we would like to thank our customers very much! We have been actively supported by you with ideas and technical implementations since the initial stage of the GPOs.
Eventually it was one of our long-time partners, who provided us with an administrative template (ADM-File).
Down to the present day, the Lookeen GPOs have proved themselves in a multitude of companies and have been continuously enhanced.
Lookeen has been supporting the feature group policies since version 1.3 – whereas by now altogether more than 50 GPOs setting options exist, like e.g. suppression of the wizard, explicit control regarding the different exchange modes, options adjustable ON/OFF, shared index path and many more…
If you also plan to use Lookeen in your company or if you have questions regarding group policies or ADM-files, please send us an email to info@lookeen.com.
Do you have a sales question? Contact us at 315-352-0745 US/CA
For technical support please use the support form