"People don't care about security," Lasser said. "Witness the astounding success of Web mail accounts through entirely insecure providers. Convenience trumps security every time."

Peter Trei, an experienced engineer who works for a large encryption vendor, says, "At the moment, the vast majority of the people on the Net don't use crypto, see no need to, and aren't going to lift a finger to do so. That leaves you with the rather limited market of people who are activists in one sense or another, and people with real operational needs."

Trei also said that governments that rely on wiretaps for intelligence or criminal investigation may not welcome encrypted laptops and cellular phones. "Things which thwart (surveillance) may become difficult to market, and could land users in hot water," Trei said. "I understand that Holland has one of the highest wiretap rates in the world. They could easily ban the crypto phone."

NAH6's Gonggrijp doesn't seem worried. He's had experience battling government restrictions, both as the founder of the legendary Hack-Tic hacker magazine in the 1980s and co-founder of the Dutch Internet firm xs4all, which has hosted controversial Web sites during its 10-year history.

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"These things just need to be built," Gonggrijp said. "Everyone's screaming for it. These four projects represent about 70 percent of what people are demanding."

Gonggrijp is funding the four-person start-up, which is about 9 months old and is based in his home in Amsterdam.

A version of Secure Notebook seen by CNET News.com includes a graphical interface that allows users to choose between encryption strengths, make backups and type in their pass phrase to continue booting. The electronic key that, in combination with the pass phrase, unlocks the hard drives, can be stored on a USB dongle.

NAH6's other products include a program called Crypt-o-Matic, a transparent way to PGP encrypt and decrypt all incoming and outgoing mail. It works by grabbing mail messages after they're sent and before they arrive and silently handling the encryption.

Crypt-o-Matic will be available in a few months, NAH6 says, and free for noncommercial use.

Another offering is a patch to the popular Mailman mailing list software, sponsored by the Free Software Foundation. It upgrades Mailman to support encrypted mailing lists and will be released under the GNU General Public License.

Even if its products turn out to be cloyingly friendly and easy-to-use, security experts seem pessimistic about NAH6's commercial chances. About the only way to make money in desktop security, they say, has been to own key patents like RSA Security did.

"There's no money in desktop security," said Bruce Schneier, the CTO of Counterpane Internet Security, which sells intrusion detection services. "It's a tough world. Everyone likes to talk big about security, but no one really cares. Good luck to them."

Perry Metzger, a security advisor at wasabisystems.com speculated that NAH6's biggest impact may be political, not commercial.

"I've seen a couple of people propose that before, including one who tried to start a company to do it," Metzger said about the encrypted phone. "My guess is that skill required to set such a thing up--even the minimal skill in question--might keep it from becoming mass popular."

How does your company protect sensitive data stored on employees' notebooks? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.

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