PKWARE Ships New OS/400 Software, Moves to Solidify ZIP Encryption

by Alex Woodie

PKWARE shipped new compression software Monday that allows OS/400 and mainframe shops to share large files (4 GB and up) with Windows and Unix shops. The Brown Deer, Wisconsin, company also announced it has filed a patent application for the process it uses to encrypt compressed files, in an attempt to "coax" other developers of ZIP compression software to settle on a single, standardized technique for applying strong encryption to the ZIP file format.

Yesterday marked the first day of availability for the Version 5.6 releases of PKZIP for iSeries and PKZIP for Mainframe, which share a common code base. Among other changes, there is now no upper limit for the size of a file that can be compressed using the big-iron version of the PKZIP product. Previously, OS/400 and mainframe shops were limited to a 4 GB file size (before compression), if they sought to share that file with an organization that would open it with PKZIP software running on Windows, Unix, or Linux servers. OS/400 and mainframe shops had no limit on the size of file they could share, but the file size limit was a barrier to interoperability among the entire PKZIP product range, which is a major push for PKWARE these days. The company has also made compressed files self-extracting with this release of the OS/400 and mainframe products.

The new release of the mainframe and OS/400 PKZIP products should also run quite a bit faster than the previous release of the product, Version 5.5, which introduced 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and started shipping this February. Company officials say they have made significant enhancements to the product's internals--the compression algorithm--that result in files being compressed by up to 30 percent faster than before. This change is a result of PKWARE replacing a third-party encryption algorithm with its own proprietary encryption algorithm. This, too, is part of PKWARE's push to get the two product sets (OS/400-mainframe and Windows-Unix) in synch, says George Haddix, the company's chairman and CEO.

After delivering support for large files with the OS/400 and mainframe offerings, the remaining major feature that is out of synch between the two product sets is support for certificate-based encryption. PKZIP for Windows and PKZIP for Unix both gained support for certificate-based encryption with the Version 6.0 release this winter. The OS/400 and mainframe products currently rely on passwords to authenticate users before they're allowed to decrypt and open documents. Company officials say they are in the early development stage of supporting digital certificates with their big-iron products; delivery of the technology is expected by mid-2004. Caution is the key with these critical servers, Haddix says. "We have to be extra careful on the AS/400 and mainframe, that we don't do anything that will change the application," he says.

Besides bringing parity to its internal products, PKWARE is seeking a greater degree of interoperability among all ZIP products using encryption. The problem the company faces in this regard is that ZIP is--and always has been, since Phil Katz founded the company and posted his ZIP program on the Internet--a freely distributed standard for file compression. The company is concerned that files that have been compressed and encrypted using its PKZIP product cannot be decrypted and decompressed using other ZIP products, such as WinZip Computing's WinZip 9.0, which also uses 256-bit AES encryption and is currently in beta.

PKWARE is attempting to resolve this interoperability problem by enforcing a standard way to apply encryption to the ZIP file format. To give its enforcement some teeth, the company has filed a patent application for the way it applies encryption. The idea is that PKWARE will give free licenses to apply its encryption technique to WinZip Computing and other makers of ZIP compression software. The flip side, of course, is the threat of legal action against those that don't.

In the meantime, companies will be able to open encrypted ZIP files using the free Windows-based ZIP reader program the company introduced earlier this year. In a related announcement also made this week, PKWARE is offering to private-label its ZIP reader, allowing organizations to customize and distribute the product to its users. The private-label ZIP reader carries a volume-based setup fee, starting at $2,000 for 1,000 readers.

Pricing for PKZIP for iSeries 5.6 is server-based and has not changed from PKZIP for OS/400 5.5. The license fee for PKZIP for iSeries Standard, which provides basic compression functionality, ranges from $600 for a P05 box to $8,000 for a P50 box. PKZIP for iSeries Enterprise Edition, which adds support for large file sizes, ranges in price from $800 (P05) to $10,660 (P50). PKZIP Professional, which brings strong security, ranges from $999 (P05) to $13,325 (P50). For more information, go to www.pkware.com.

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