Securent

Security startup Securent is looking to lock down database data, tapping into users' growing fears of an internal security breach. (See IP Theft Needs Attention and Security Upgrades Proliferate.)

Securent will unveil a souped-up version of its Entitlement Management Solution (EMS) next week, and claims to have found a way to plug some of the biggest internal security gaps. The vendor started selling software in late 2005 to control access to custom-built Java and .Net-based applications such as, for example, company travel systems or financial trading applications.

The last few years have seen growing paranoia about who gets access to what data or systems within an organization, prompting many CIOs and IT managers to rethink their security strategies. (See Oops, They Did It Again, On the Brink of Storage Disaster, 26 IRS Computer Tapes Missing, and Storm Clouds Over Los Alamos.)

Next week, Securent will take the wraps off the third version of this product, adding support for Oracle databases and Microsoft Sharepoint to the software. "Now we can apply the same policy-based framework to databases -- companies have no way to govern how much access insiders such as database administrators have to database data," says Howard Ting, the startup's director of product management.

The EMS software, runs on a standard Windows, Linux, or Unix server. SQL agents are deployed on Oracle databases or Sharepoint servers, which can intercept requests for data for users before it reaches the database. "We can stop that request based on who the user is," adds Ting.