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Spreadsheet Sentry History

Spreadsheet Sentry was conceived in 2003 following a conversation with a business owner lamenting his inability to reliably protect his spreadsheets - spreadsheets of significant commercial value and containing leading-edge technology that gave him his competitive edge.

Further investigation confirmed that the commonly used Excel ‘protection’ options – workbook, worksheet and macro protection were all easy to crack – in fact, tools to do so are readily available on the internet.

File-based password protection gave slightly better security against access by unauthorized users. However, the password had to be provided for authorized users, and once opened, there was no real remaining protection against unauthorized use by an authorized user – employee theft.

Thus, Spreadsheet Sentry was developed – a product offering robust software security, location security, and security that remained in place during legitimate use. Spreadsheet Sentry allows significant flexibility of operation, yet has minimal impact on system resources.