The Technology And Scope Of Enforcement Of Software Protection

Over 20 years, legal protection for software has increased rapidly around the world, the technology and scope of enforcement of software protection continues to increase in varies methods significantly.

The ultimate software protection is the hardware based software protection dongle, or we can call hardware key, dongle-based protection, software copy protection dongle, etc. This kind of protection might be the best, and it can maximum the software vendors' revenue.

The advantages of USB software protection dongles.

Ø Hardware-based protection with the USB dongle secures sales and profits by preventing software piracy and license infringements.

Ø Provides flexible variable licensing methods such, subscription, leasing, pay-per-use, by period, etc.

Ø A single USB dongle can protect several applications. An entire network can be protected with only one hardware key.

Ø Remote Update provides conveniences of distribution, updates and follow-up of sales.

Ø Every copy of the software is registered and prohibits the illegal usage.

Ø USB security dongle offers two levels of protection: envelope and the API. The envelope contains the decryption engine plus several pre-canned defenses to defeat reverse engineering. API allows embedding calls to the hardware key in code and performs custom checks to defeat reverse engineering attackers.

Differentiate dongles by port:

Ø Serial port: It seems the serial port dongle is a history for now.

Ø Parallel port: with the increasing USB port in all types of computers the parallel port dongles are vanishing from the marketing.

Ø USB dongles: USB port dongles are the absolutely mainstream and take up all the positions in every district.

Differentiate dongles by driver

Ø The dongle with driver: customers have to install the driver before insert the dongle, actually most the dongle problem are caused by the driver.

Ø The driverless dongle: end users do not have to install the driver, just insert the dongle to the USB port, it works perfectly. This saves loads of work of technical support team.

Differentiate dongles by cases

Ø Water-Proofed dongles: these dongles are waterproofed as the case is plastic injection molded to resist water filter into the dongle body, it perfectly fit the use of oceanic software.

Ø Non Water-Proofed: the case is buttoned up, it is with possibility of water leakage into the dongle body.

Differentiate dongles by real time clock.

Ø Dongles that with a real time clock inside is called real time dongle. Real Time is specially designed for software vendors who needs to control and manage the software's rental and selling in subscription or maintenance, it allows to pay per use, in this way software vendor can completely control the sales by charging the end users timely and periodically. This function is based on a real time clock deposited in the dongle indicating the specific time (hour, minute, second) and date (day, month, year).

Ø Non-real time dongle- There is no real time clock inside the dongle, vendors can set the time by virtual clock, but the time can be changed with the system time changing.