June 7th, 2005
Intellectual Property Protection
IPP I ran into Raj Dhingra at the Gartner IT Security Summit here in DC. One of Raj’s accomplishments was as VP Marketing at Intruvert which was sold to Network Associates. Raj left NAI (McAffee) last year and had been looking for his next opportunity. He landed at one of the “V” companies. You know, Vantu, Vidius, Vericept, etc. All of these companies are in the IPP space. They counter the threat of your IP assets walking out the door. Most organizations grant a high level of trust to their employees. In other words, they treat the risk of losing information as close to zero. The importance of customer lists, health records, financials, private emails, contracts, even forms and templates, are overlooked. The companies in this space use various clever techniques to earmark that data and alert or prevent it from leaving the corporate network. This won’t stop an Ignazio Lopez from walking off with boxes of printed material but it will certainly slow down the leakage. So, back to terminology. I don’t know if Raj had anything to do with this but Vidius changed its name to Port Authority so recently that their signage at the show had not been updated yet. Great move. I have been involved in lots of naming decisions and the first decision is always to have a name that is memorable and meaningful. Port Authority is much better than Vidius. Oh, good timing for making a splash at the Gartner show too. Right after the revelation of a major quagmire of industrial espionage in Israel , PortAuthority took in $13.4 million in venture funds. Now about the category… I don’t think PortAuthority’s term "leak prevention" is any better than "Extrusion Prevention". Even if, as Raj points out, there is a "leak a week" coming to light.
Richard Stiennon is an industry consultant. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
