Sentinel LDK Protection

Sentinel LDK is an innovative, advanced solution for protecting software against illegal or unauthorized use. The solution helps prevent illegal access and execution of protected applications.

A deployed application that is protected with Sentinel LDK requires access to a specific Sentinel protection key in order to run. The protected application queries the Sentinel protection key for predefined information. If the Sentinel protection key is not present, or the information returned is incorrect, the program does not execute, or stops functioning.

After you have selected a Sentinel LDK protection method, implementation is straightforward. Regardless of the selected protection strategy, protected applications only work correctly if they can access the information stored in a specific Sentinel protection key.

The following table provides an overview of how the tools available for protection and licensing can be used to achieve the desired results:

Objective	Sentinel Licensing API	Sentinel LDK Envelope	Combined Implementation (Licensing API and Envelope)
Copy protection	Provides basic protection.	Provides very strong protection.	Provides very strong protection.
Anti-reverse engineering	Not included	Included	Included
Number of Features that can be licensed in a given application	Unlimited. Each Feature is integrated separately using a unique Feature ID and login API call.	One Feature per executable or DLL. No API integration is required.	Unlimited. Each Feature is integrated separately using a unique Feature ID and login API call.
Support for custom licensing	Available using protection key memory.	Not supported.	Available using protection key memory.

NOTE   For the most flexible licensing and highest level of copy protection, Thales recommends that you implement both Sentinel Licensing API and Sentinel LDK Envelope.