We passed a great milestone this week – our second Cloud marketplace implementation for Vormetric Transparent Encryption as we added support for IBM Cloud Marketplace to our existing AWS Marketplace offering.
If you are an enterprise looking to take advantage of the flexibility, cost savings and business agility that comes with using cloud-based resources, we already know something that’s been at the top of your list – How can I safely use sensitive data and take advantage of these resources when I don’t control the data location, physical access, network structure/infrastructure, underlying compute hardware, virtual environment and more? A recent BitGlass report showed that enterprise adoption of cloud is slower than the common consensus had believed it to be – and the underlying concerns that drove this? A perceived lack of security for data and apps, compliance requirements, regulatory issues and the lack of written commitments from cloud providers all contributed as well.
It’s a real conundrum for enterprises, and that conundrum has resulted in few taking the leap to cloud with existing production applications. As we’ve seen for the last several years, enterprises have tended to leverage private clouds by preference, and relegate public cloud use for development and test or non-mission critical applications. I have to also think that the old IT adage of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is operating here. For existing applications that are up, running and well supported, there are few incentives for IT to transition to new infrastructure and a new implementation.
But if you are one of those who has reached the inflection point – If you have a new application coming on line, if your bottom line has been cut to the point where you have to watch every dime and every dollar, if your line-of-business managers are screaming because they are seeing competitors use cloud for business advantage with better customer profiling, slick web enabled mobile apps that need a back end, new offerings and more – than you need to solve the conundrum.
How do you do it? Well one good illustration is found with what we at Vormetric have available on IBM’s new Cloud Marketplace.
A brief aside here - The IBM Cloud Marketplace is a cool new offering. It includes over 100 SaaS applications, IBM's Bluemix platform-as-a-service with its suite of composable services, the powerful SoftLayer infrastructure-as-a-service platform as well as offerings from market leading 3rd party partners like Vormetric. From what I’ve seen, it really delivers the capability to build and deploy new services faster.
<ClickToTweet>: #IBM Cloud Marketplace gains Data-at-Rest protection w/@Vormetric #Encryption, #AccessControl & #SecurityIntelligence http://bit.ly/1gXFfuL
What are we offering there today? Our market leading data-at-rest protection solution for structured and unstructured data (file systems and databases) – Vormetric Transparent Encryption. With this solution, you effectively “lockout” access to data by people or applications that don’t have a “need to know”. Data is only decrypted for the right people or applications, with the right permissions, at the right time, and in the right way. And those who have to maintain systems and infrastructure (privileged users of every stripe) never see the data, but can do their work – whether they are your employees, the cloud providers employees, or a those at a backup DR recovery provider. And if you also use a SIEM system like QRadar, Splunk or ArcSight – plug our access data directly in to see if accounts have been compromised by malware or a malicious insider attack by watching the data access patterns.
This solves a host of problems –
- Meet regulatory requirements – Using encryption and access control to meet several compliance frameworks, like PCI and HIPPA
- Have a safe harbor from data breaches of personal information – Under many local and national laws
- For multi-nationals – Meet data-across-borders requirements for employees and customers
- Don’t worry about what happens to the physical infrastructure – If someone walks away with a drive, or disposes of it, there is no access to the data
- Cloud Provider’s SLA for security is not a concern – You’ve effectively locked them out of your data, so getting the formal agreement on how they’ll protect your data is less of a concern
It’s a great time to check out this new offering from IBM and take a look at how we can help you secure your data when you do so.
Defending your data in the cloud with Vormetric Transparent Encryption? Let us know if you have any feedback. I can be reached at cradford@vormetric.com or twitter @cjrad.