Just over a year ago, EVP Office 8.5.0 was released and included the ability to use cryptographically secure connections to run evaluations. The same technology that protects your bank account and your credit card when you’re on-line could now be used to protect your evaluations. We called these “Secure” evaluations, and named the traditional method “Classic.” You can switch back and forth between them in Tools → Options... → Communication.
Today, with the release of EVP Office 8.5.3, “Secure” evaluations are now the default for new installations. You can download the new version from www.evpsys.com/software, for free, as always. If you’re already running EVP Office, upgrading will keep your current settings. But if you put EVP Office 8.5.3 on a new computer, it will—by default—connect to our computers securely. (For the nerds: Our secure connections use HTTPS/TLS 1.2, encrypted with an RSA 2048-bit certificate using the SHA-256 algorithm.)
Also by default, 8.5.3 will also automatically check if your network has a proxy defined, and will use it if it’s available. (Again, for the nerds: We check both Internet Options settings and the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) protocol, and can use local or Group Policy-defined proxies, or parse Proxy Auto Configuration (PAC) files. The proxy details can also be explicitly set per application. And we support using the logged-in user’s details if the proxy supports NTLM authentication.)
EVP Office 8.5.3 isn’t a major release, and you don’t need to upgrade if you don’t need or want any of its changes. But this new version is pointing the way that EVP Systems is taking all our products: more secure, more state-of-the-art, more automated. We’ve got a lot of exciting stuff planned and can’t wait to get it to you.