AS THE UK civil servant who oversaw the loss of data records relating to 25 million Brit families gets a £2.3 million pay-off, Voltage claims it can negate the danger from laptop loss.

Obviously Voltage supplies yet another variation on data encryption. But this one has a difference – it aims to be very simple to use.

For starters, you don't need to wander around with an RSA dongle on your key fob any more. With Voltage, you authenticate yourself online.

Voltage calls this technology 'Identity Based Encryption' (IBE). The beauty of IBE is that – being HTML based – any device that supports a browser can authenticate itself. So that includes mobile handsets.

This capability should remove the nightmare for many corporate IT managers who discover that sensitive company data is 'leaking out' onto smartphones.

These days virtually any mobile handset worth its salt offers the ability to enable its owner to send and receive emails. If those emails are encrypted then the IT department doesn't have to worry.

Naturally, Voltage has a specific product – called Securemail – for protecting email messages and their attachments.

Additionally, it also offers 'Securedata' which encrypts stored files. That means that if somebody walks in and steals your server – as recently happened to one Bank – the data held on it will still be useless.

Cheekily, Voltage's Daryl Hyett even claimed that his company's product was Green and "could help save the Planet."

That's because it can help some companies drastically reduce the amount of paper they send out.

So for a Building Society, for example, instead of sending a letter to customers every time the mortgage rate changes, they can send opt-in customers an encrypted email instead.

Another benefit to its software, the company claims, is that there is very little data overhead over unencrypted files. So sending and receiving encrypted emails using a smartphone won't add an absolute fortune to your phone bill.

The company has won some significant fans. Most noticeably US telecoms provider, AT&T, which has recommended Voltage to all of its suppliers.

Maybe Voltage can succeed where other encryption vendors have had very limited success to date. And accidentally leaving a memory stick containing secret MOD files on a train won't be an absolute disaster any more. µ