pwStore 2.0.1 Release

In January, we released pwStore 2.0 to a beta site. Over the last several months we have fixed bugs and made changes to enhance it's usability. Today we release version 2.0.1 to our existing customer base.

There is some good news and bad news with the 2.x release. First the bad news.... There is no upgrade path from 1.x to the 2.x version. What does this mean? Our existing customers have to re-enter there password data. After a lot of consideration we decided not to invest the programing time into making a conversion program. Why? 2 reasons, and they overlap each other. The data is stored completely different in version 2 and even if we had converted the data, the customer would have had to touch each and every record and make many changes.

Now for the good news... pwStore is a true client/server product. pwStore runs as a Windows service and provides two interfaces, a web browser and Desktop Agent. I think that most people will use the Desktop Agent as their primary interface and the web browser when they are in a pinch. An enhancement is the addition of personal passwords. Users can store their personal password in pwStore along with department passwords. Only the user can see their personal passwords.

Take a look at the product page on www.aultware.com for details about pwstore 2.0.

pwStore 2.0 - Update

pwStore 2.0 development is coming along. It has been running in production at one customers site for about 3 months now. The Desktop Agent is currently in Beta testing also.

We hope to be close to a release within the next 60 days and will be sending email notifications out to existing customers. Those with current maintenance agreements will be able to upgrade to the new version without any additional cost.

Licensing Server Developement Update

Our new licensing server is finished and online.  We have added the licensing functionality into a new product, awSiteUp, and have been testing different scenarios.  It's faster, more robust,  and secure.  After reviewing several encryption algorithm's,  we choose Blowfish.

Google Chrome Browser

I downloaded and tested the new browser from Google.  I like it!! It is very fast with a simple interface.  It doesn't look like a web browser.  So much so, that after about 20 minutes of working on a couple of sites, I forgot I was on the Internet and using a browser.  I think this is the effect they are trying for.

A nice feature is that the shortcut keys are the same as FireFox, making the learning curve more like a horizontal line.

Chrome is still early beta and will only get better.  Like most browsers, I was ask if I wanted my login credentials saved when I logged into a secure site.  I did a quick search on the password manager for Chrome and came up with nil.  Until there is more information about it, I will have to pass on it.

Software Licensing

One of the challenges for every developer is how to protect your software from piracy. To this end, AultWare built an online licensing server. Each of our applications must contact the licensing server to get the customers license information. We are currently re-writing the delivery channel and logic. If you look at the release notes for pwStore, you will see that we have gone through several iterations of licensing over the last year or so.

We were using http get and posts. The new process will be a RAW connection encrypted via SSL and run over port 443. One of the challenges to this form of licensing is to ensure that the communication will be permitted through the customers firewall. This is why we have selected port 443 which is used for https and typically allowed.

pwStore and PeopleFind Update

The good news is that both products are moving forward. During the early development stage, we made a decision to write both pwStore and PeopleFind as web based applications. They are self contained and do not require a web server. This makes them easy to roll out and very accessible to your end users.

We have run into a snag with some of the code and are working with a vendor to correct the problem. So, while development has slowed, we have been working on a re-write of our licensing server and 2 new products, awSnapShot and awRunAs. More on them in latter posts.

pwStore 2.0

While the overall concept of storing passwords is still the main focus of pwStore, version 2 will move from user name and password records to device records.

Version 2

• You will add a device and then associate as many passwords as you need to each device.
• Security will be based on group membership instead of a numbering system. Security groups can be assigned to the device or individual password level.
  
• Client / Server architecture