Reblogged from Ascent Venture Partners

Last week PerspecSys announced a new financing round that we participated in, alongside Paladin and Intel. We are very excited to be working with the team and our co-investors, and see tremendous potential for this company.

Over the last 12 to 18 months, we have witnessed an almost seismic shift in the posture of large enterprise customers toward cloud-based applications. SaaS has been around for over a decade – and many folks have realized the benefits and become early adopters – but the technology represents a big change for IT, and larger enterprises have been reluctant to move major applications or critical data to the cloud, due to fears of loss of control.

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By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

Today is a big day for PerspecSys. We just announced that we’ve secured $12M in Series B funding, co-led by new investors Paladin Capital Group and Ascent Venture Partners and joined by existing backer Intel Capital. This is an important and exciting step in the growth of our business – not only for the obvious operational implications, but because it signifies the legitimate arrival of the category of Cloud Data Protection Gateways. Why do I say this?

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By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Living Social, the popular online discount site, recently experienced a cyber attack affecting more than 50 million of their customers. Users with a Living Social account received an email explaining the data breach, which included hackers accessing customer user names, email addresses, birth dates and passwords. (more…)

By David Stott PerspecSys Senior Director, Product Management

In a recent blog post, we discussed the emergence of Cloud Protection Gateways as a solution for enterprises looking to protect sensitive cloud data by keeping that data under their complete control.  We started looking at the vetting process enterprises undertake when they are selecting a Cloud Protection Gateway Provider. (more…)

By David Stott PerspecSys Senior Director, Product Management

As the proliferation of the cloud continues, Cloud Protection Gateways are increasingly being discussed as a way to address security issues surrounding cloud adoption. Whatever stage of cloud adoption your organization is in, a thorough vetting of the different gateways available will be important to address key security issues, including data residency concerns, industry compliance and internal security best practices.

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By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

The convenience, efficiency and cost benefits cloud computing offers organizations has made moving healthcare data and records to the cloud make sense for hospitals, physicians and other healthcare providers. Security and data breaches are a concern for any industry utilizing the cloud, but healthcare unfortunately seems to be particularly vulnerable to attacks. The Washington Post recently reported that The Department of Homeland Security is fearful that the health industry is “inviting” an attack with its out-of-date policies and lack of oversight. (more…)

By David Stott PerspecSys Senior Director, Product Management

KPMG just released a very interesting report where they partnered with Forbes Insights to conduct a survey of cloud adopters. The report discussed practices and challenges confronted by organizations that have begun to adopt cloud computing and is based on the responses of more than 650 senior executives from 16 countries in a variety of industries. It revealed that more than half of organizations are already working in the cloud. The responses demonstrate that despite growing pains, the cloud marketplace is quickly expanding. (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

The benefits associated with adoption of the cloud are well documented and understood.  Organizations cite tremendous cost savings, fast deployment times and streamlined application support & maintenance when compared to traditional on-premise software deployments.  So what is holding many companies back from adopting the cloud?  A recent report from Gartner entitled “Five Cloud Data Residency Issues That Must Not Be Ignored” highlights one key reason for this hesitancy – enterprises’ questions and concerns about jurisdictional and regulatory control arising from a lack of clarity on where cloud data truly resides. The report from Gartner recommends that enterprises adopt measures that will simultaneously boost the security of sensitive data as well as assist them in satisfying regulatory compliance with data residency laws.

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By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

Over 5B wireless connectivity chips will ship in 2013, according to ABI Research. Today, there are roughly two Internet-connected devices for every person on the planet. Most of those chips will be in tablets, sensors, cameras and even light bulbs or refrigerators. Increasingly most get connected to the Internet. Over the next decade, most of the connected device growth will come from very small sensors that are primarily doing machine-to-machine communications and acting as the digital nerve endings for highly dynamic global sense-and-respond systems. By 2025, analysts are forecasting that this ratio of Internet-connected devices per human will surpass six. This means we can expect to grow to nearly 50B Internet-connected devices in the next decade. (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Recently, McKinsey & Company released an article entitled Protecting information in the cloud which discussed the increased use of cloud computing by enterprises of a variety of sizes and industries and the benefits and risks cloud usage entails. The article recognizes that many organizations are already using cloud applications and realizing the efficiency and cost benefits and, in fact, most are looking to increase their usage of the cloud in 2013 and beyond in both private and public environments. But there are issues that are inhibiting adoption, such as risks associated with data security and concerns around privacy and compliance. (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Last month Gartner Analyst Jay Heiser conducted an extremely informative and thought-provoking webinar entitled “The Current and Future State of Cloud Security, Risk and Privacy.” During the presentation, Mr. Heiser highlighted what he called the “Public Cloud Risk Gap”, characterized in part by inadequate processes and technologies by the cloud service providers and in part by a lack of diligence and planning by enterprises using public cloud applications. In many ways, it was a call to arms to ensure that adequate controls, thought and preparation are put to use before public clouds are adopted by enterprises and public sector organizations. (more…)

By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

So you’ve decided, or it’s been decided for you, that your company will use cloud applications in 2013. Maybe you already are among the converted and you’re ready to expand use of cloud apps. What you may not have seen among the forecasts for cloud adoption rates are shifting sands under your feet in the form of local, national and international laws that put you in the cross hairs – mandatory fines and potentially jail sentences – should your information be compromised. Thinking again about your plans? Lots of people are, and justifiably so. (more…)

Reblogged from Midsize Insider

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently released a set of data privacy and security best practices. Since these “suggestions” may also come with an almost $8 million fine for violation, enterprise, small, and midsize IT pros all need to take notice. What’s most notable about the guidelines laid out by the ICO is that data owners, not service providers, bear responsibility for proper use. In other words, it doesn’t matter that a cloud vendor says they’ll keep customer data secure. If a breach occurs, the midsize company that owns it will be on the hook. This ties into the larger issue IT admins now face: What’s private in a world where access is ubiquitous? (more…)

By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently published a useful and informative report on cloud computing that provides key guidance for companies using or considering cloud services in the UK.  The guidelines intend to help organizations comply with the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA), and they offer welcome assistance for private and public enterprises struggling to avoid stiff non-compliance penalties from the watchdog agency. (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Massachusetts Ear and Eye, Inc. (MEEI) agreed to pay a hefty $1.5 million settlement to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for alleged HIPAA violations. According to MEEI, a personal laptop that contained unencrypted electronic protected health information (ePHI) was stolen, exposing a large amount of personal, clinical, and patient prescription data. (more…)

By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

Driven by large-scale government initiatives as well as private investment, cloud computing has become a hot growth area in China. Named a ‘Strategic Emerging Industry’ in the government’s 12^th Five Year Plan (2011 – 2015), cloud computing is slated to become a primary force in the Chinese IT industry and overall economy in the next 3 – 5 years. In fact, according to IDC Asia-Pacific, China spent $286 million on cloud-computing infrastructure last year, and the amount will increase to more than $1 billion in 2016. The Asia Cloud Computing Association reports that total investment in cloud computing projects in China is expected to reach $154 billion over the coming few years. (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Another month brings another new study highlighting security concerns as the leading barrier to cloud uptake in the enterprise. Rather than decreasing, it seems like the concerns are going in the other direction. Security breaches (such as those at iCloud and DropBox) continue to make headline news and add fuel to the fire. The winner in this situation? On-premise solutions. Who pays?  The enterprise. Actually, it pays through the nose, since expenditures for on-premise solutions can be anywhere from 3-7 times more expensive than their cloud equivalents (at least in the estimates that I have seen). (more…)

By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

Gartner recently issued a research note on “Cloud-Based Security Services,” the capability to deliver security controls without on-premise technology deployment and management. The category currently sits in the “Trough of Disillusionment” in the latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Security, meaning the technologies offered have failed to meet market expectations.  (more…)

By Gerry Grealish PerspecSys Vice President of Marketing & Products

Gartner recently published a report that highlights the growing importance of Cloud Access Security Brokers – solution providers that offer unified cloud security platforms. This solution category includes a new class of products that Gartner terms Cloud Encryption Gateways, which encrypt or tokenize sensitive information before it leaves an organization’s firewall. These solutions, if designed properly, allow organizations to maintain control of sensitive data since they replace the original “clear-text” values with indecipherable replacement values in the cloud. Businesses are adopting these solutions to address issues raised by data residency requirements and data privacy regulations driven by a host of industry compliance mandates. In addition to enabling organizations to satisfy the data protection needs, products like those from PerspecSys also preserve the user experience with the SaaS application (such as Salesforce.com or Oracle CRM). With PerspecSys, critical functionality like Search is retained even when strong encryption (e.g., FIPS 140-2 validated modules) or tokenization is used to protect the data being sent to the cloud. (more…)

By David Canellos PerspecSys President and CEO

Gartner recently published a report that highlights a trend that we have been experiencing over the past few years, namely, the growing number of enterprises wrestling with cloud data security, cloud compliance, and cloud data residency issues associated with storing and processing sensitive information in SaaS cloud applications. Gartner estimates that by 2016, 25% of enterprises will secure access to cloud-based services using what they term a Cloud Access Security Broker platform and that these platforms will reduce the cost of securing access by 30%. Based on what we have seen from our clients, I think the cost savings are a low estimate.

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