Zend Heightens Obfuscation for PHP Apps

Published: April 27, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Zend Technologies, the company backing the commercialization of the open source PHP scripting language, offers a product called Zend Guard that protects PHP investments, while helping vendors distribute their code. The program has been recently updated.

Zend Guard is comprised of two key components, including the Zend Guard encoder and the Zend Guard license manager, which enables the protection and mass distribution of commercial PHP applications and gives the users the option of licensing models, such as concurrent users, time limited, segment of network, or server specific.

With Zend Guard version 4, the company has boosted protection against reverse engineering by improving the encoding phase, the company says, adding that the product now offers three layers of obfuscation. Guard 4 also sports an easier-to-use interface, new wizards, and support for the latest version of PHP, version 5.1.

"Developers need the strongest, easiest-to-use and most flexible tools to protect their code," says Doron Gerstel, president and CEO of Zend Technologies. "With Zend Guard, they get the horsepower to protect their intellectual property and their revenue."