Fundamentals of Protection

This section examines the nature of protection, and identifies the two types of protection that you need to consider.

What is Protection?

Protection is the process of securing an application or intellectual property by incorporating automated and customized security strategies.

Protection is achieved by implementing specific security strategies, such as wrapping your application in a security envelope, and incorporating various security measures within the application’s code during development. The greater the number of security measures incorporated, and the higher the level of their complexity, the more secure your application becomes.

It is not sufficient to protect only your software—you must also protect your intellectual property. Your professional expertise and the secrets that you use in developing your software, for example algorithms, must also be protected.

Copy Protection

Copy protection is the process of encrypting your software and incorporating various security measures throughout the code and binding it to a key so that it can only be accessed by authorized users who are in possession of the key. The more complex the copy protection applied to your software, the less likely it is to be compromised.

Similarly, important data files can be encrypted and protected with licensing so that only users who possess the key are able to access the files.

Intellectual Property Protection

Your intellectual property is the foundation on which your products are developed. Intellectual property theft is surprisingly easy. Every year, companies report the loss of proprietary information and intellectual property valued at many billions of dollars.

The algorithms and other secret information that you use to make your products unique and competitive must be protected against attempts to discover their secrets, or to apply reverse engineering to the software code.