Dell Tackles Data on the Move With New Security Offer

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Dell’s Data Protection Secure Lifecycle product, the most recent addition to its Dell Data Security Solutions portfolio – introduced Tuesday – targets protecting data on the move as part of an integrated security offering.

The new functionality combines with data encryption, file access monitoring, data-leakage prevention (DLP) and digital rights management (DRM) to provide organizations with end-to-end data life-cycle coverage, or protection for data that’s at rest and in motion.

Up until now, companies haven’t been protecting their data for the world we live in today, Brett Hansen, vice president for endpoint data security and management at Dell, told us.

“If we think about the world that we live in today and how quickly data is moved, transferred and shared, we really lose control of it very quickly,” he said.

Hansen pointed out a couple of other security challenges organizations are dealing with today, such as using multiple security products for data protection – which in and of itself has the potential to compromise security – and also makes managing security policies more arduous and time-consuming.

The new element to Dell’s Data Security Solutions portfolio is protecting data beyond an organization’s boundaries – no matter where it goes – from a single console. Among its most important capabilities is delivering visibility into where data is, regardless of where it has moved. It provides ubiquitous coverage across devices and operating systems, safeguarding files on external storage such as USB keys, and major public cloud services, as well as on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets via a secure file container, the company said.{ad}

So, key product features: full visibility into who sent what and where; granular policy controls; protection of Microsoft Office files (initial product release with more data type coverage to follow); and use across all devices.

To simplify how the new Dell solution works: It creates a wrapper around a an encrypted file. When a user clicks on the file, it sends out a signal to the centralized manager server for the security solution at the enterprise requesting information to open that file. Once authentication has been made, the system sends out software to decrypt the file.

One of the more unique things that the Dell security software does is collect a lot of data forensics such as who tried to open the file, where it was opened, and at what time.

“That’s very important in my mind and the key differentiator when you look at the security solution market,” Steve Brasen, research director, mobile endpoint management at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), told us. Data encryption has been around for a while but it doesn’t track the location of …

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… the software itself.

“By tracking when the files are being open, you can immediately a determination if a breach has occurred – and that’s a big step,” he noted.

Dell channel partners will be able to sell the new offering and will be competing with the company’s direct sales force. Dell will offer new enablement for these partners via online training modules as well as the opportunity to interface directly with Dell sales and sales engineering teams.{ad}

“This is a fairly complex solution so we’re looking for partners who have security capabilities, have embraced concepts such as data-leakage protection and who can assume a new approach to bring a product into the marketplace,” said Hansen.

Initially, Dell Data Protection Secure Lifecycle will target midsize and larger enterprise customers and will cover Microsoft Office Suite documents. Both product and partner training are available immediately (in the U.S. and select countries). Dell plans to expand security coverage to additional data types such as PDFs and TXT, by early 2017, according to Hansen.