DataGuise Keeps Watchful Eye On Data In Developers' Hands

Company:

Headquarters: Fremont, Calif.

Technology Sector: Security

Key Products: DataGuise dg Solutions Suite

Year Founded: 2007

Number of Channel Partners: 6 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: DataGuise offers software for protecting corporate data in development and test environments, a frequently overlooked segment of IT security.

The Lowdown: Businesses today spend money -- lots of money -- to guard their corporate IT systems against outside intruders. But what about those developers, full-time employees and contractors that have access to corporate data while they develop applications? And what about protecting data that's sent to outside contractors, even outside the country, for development work?

"We saw a real need to protect corporate data in the test and development environment," said Joe Lawless, sales and marketing vice president at DataGuise. Added Erik Jarlstrom, the company's customer advocacy vice president: "If you can see the data, you can steal it."

Developers need to work with company data, everything from employee social security

numbers to information on customer invoices, to build and test applications that work with that data.

DataGuise's forte is providing tools that mask the data, transforming a real social security number into a fake one, for example, without changing its structure. That way, developers can still work with the data without actually seeing the sensitive information.

Aside from the obvious need to secure such sensitive data, businesses today must comply with a growing raft of state and federal data privacy and protection laws. Some laws specifically prohibit the use of personal data in software test environments, Jarlstrom said.

DataGuise's dg Solutions Suite includes four products: dgDiscover for determining what sensitive data IT managers have (a surprising number don't know); dgMasker for masking data when developing and testing applications; dgGuard for masking data in production environments and dgOffice, which scans Microsoft Office files for sensitive data.

DataGuise has initially targeted large companies, especially in the financial service, retail and health care industries. Now the vendor is turning its sights on midsize companies, and it's recruiting channel partners to help it win in SMB markets. DataGuise now has a half-dozen resellers who account for about 20 percent of the company's sales, Lawless said, and plans call for adding another three or four this year. That will nudge channel sales up to about 25 percent of the company's revenue, he said.

Access Computers, an Atlanta-based solution provider focused on data privacy, has been a DataGuise reseller since the start of the year. The company sells data security products from a number of vendors.

"I think DataGuise is the strongest in the field," said president and CEO Michael Katalinich, calling its technology "next generation." He said the technology's ability to identify sensitive data is "a very strong selling point." As a company to do business with, Katalinich said DataGuise encourages its direct sales force to work with channel partners.