Gazzang today announced the release of zEscrow™, a free service that enables Ubuntu desktop users to back up and recover randomly generated keys that protect Ubuntu encrypted home directories. Available immediately in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS archive and demonstrated at this week’s Ubuntu Developer Summit, zEscrow is the latest addition to the Gazzang family of data encryption and key management solutions. The software-as-a-service solution (SaaS) works on earlier versions of Ubuntu as well.

“Ubuntu leverages eCryptfs, Linux’s powerful open source encrypted file system, to transparently encrypt and decrypt all of a user’s files and folders in their home directory. However, if a user forgets his login password, or loses his randomly generated mount passphrase, all of their data could be lost forever,” said Dustin Kirkland, chief architect at Gazzang. “zEscrow alleviates this pain by enabling Ubuntu users to securely store their encryption passphrases for easy retrieval later. Gazzang actively supports the open source community and is thrilled to contribute this solution to the Linux desktop community under the AGPL free software license.”

Gazzang zEscrow can be easily activated from a user’s Ubuntu desktop. An Ubuntu home directory user simply installs and runs the command ‘zescrow’ and follows three simple prompts. A backup of the user’s eCryptfs configuration is encrypted and uploaded to the zEscrow server. To complete the backup, the user follows a URL link returned by the utility and associates a Google account with the backup. To recover the data later, the user simply goes to https://zescrow.gazzang.com, authenticates through Google OpenID, chooses a deposit to retrieve from a list, and then runs the ‘ecryptfs-recover-private’ utility.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit brings together open source innovators to drive the future direction of the Ubuntu Desktop, Mobile and Cloud platforms. The Summit takes place May 7-11, 2012 in Oakland, CA, where Kirkland will lead several discussions around security, encryption, cloud computing and big data.

For more information, visit:

• zescrow.gazzang.com
• ecryptfs.org
• ubuntu.com

About Gazzang

Gazzang develops cloud-based encryption and key management solutions that help organizations address the security challenges of open source databases and big data. Gazzang is backed by Austin Ventures and Silver Creek Ventures. For more information, visit www.gazzang.com.