Safend Adds PortAuthority Info-Leak Prevention Technology

Palo Alto, Calif.-based PortAuthority develops software and appliances to prevent what it calls "information leaks." The products detect when certain data, based on its actual content, is made available outside a company's protected data infrastructure and either quarantines the data, audits it or encrypts it to prevent access by unauthorized users.

By adding the PortAuthority technology, Philadelphia-based Safend now can help customers enforce policies on how their sensitive data is being copied, said Raj Dhingra, vice president of marketing at PortAuthority. Before the agreement, Safend customers and solution provider partners could specify that certain files or file types couldn't be copied, he said.

"But users can change file names, or file types, or compress the data to change it," Dhingra said. "Now they can enforce policies based on content."

Dhingra said that, as far as he knows, there's no other way to provide content-aware protection of data on a network or on a desktop.

"Others do it for desktops, but only in terms of the metadata," he said. "They can allow some level of device control, such as not letting USB devices connect to the desktop. Or they may do it based on file name or file type. But someone can copy information to an Excel spreadsheet or other file type. And unless you look at the content of the data, you can't stop it."

The PortAuthority technology will become available through Safend's channel partners this week, Dhingra said. The technology is expected to be integrated with Safend's products toward the end of the year, he added.

Last month, San Diego-based Websense unveiled a similar partnership with PortAuthority to develop software to allow organizations to control where users go and which information they can send or use.