Roxio Secure Burn Plus review

Even the most diligent, security-conscious firms will inevitably fall victim to human error and lose discs containing sensitive data. Roxio's Secure Burn Plus aims to prevent the most serious security consequences of such a loss – strangers getting ahold of the important information on those discs. Secure Burn Plus encrypts and password protects optical discs such as CDs and DVDs so any private information should remain private, even if the disc is lost or stolen.

Secure Burn Plus is a complete disc writing program in its own right and is used in place of whatever disc burning software you currently use. IT administrators configure Secure Burn Plus by installing a Permissions Manager on each computer. Permissions Manager is then used to create user names and passwords. Those user accounts can be organised into groups which not only makes administration easier, but also allows finer grained control over security – certain groups can be allowed to access discs burnt by other groups, but not vice-versa, for example. Permissions can also be set so that users don’t need to input their password when viewing discs created by a colleague in their group.

The Permissions Manager is where you set user account details and security policies

Once you've finished configuring Secure Burn Plus, the Permissions Manager can be locked or deleted from the computer to prevent the user from making unauthorised changes. If deleted, the security polices will still be in force. A more sophisticated server-based management approach is available in the more expensive Roxio Secure Managed version of the software, but this isn't yet available in Europe for reasons Roxio has yet to reveal to us.