By James E. Gaskin
Digital loss prevention, sometimes called digital leak prevention (DLP), has been a complicated, enterprise-only play. But Trend Micro just announced that their Control Manager 6.0 includes DLP support.
“DLP in the past required additional layers, lots of expertise, and needed to be installed and configured by itself,” says Patrick Wheeler, Trend Micro’s global product marketing manager. “Our new solution integrates content-based DLP into our existing client and server agents, and can be managed with the new Control Manager 6 along with all our other services.”
Wheeler also believes this is the time to add DLP to existing Trend Micro customers who wanted DLP but didn’t have the resources to deploy a stand-alone solution. Even though DLP has been an important security topic for years, Wheeler says the complexity and other barriers have kept the installation percentage down to “single digits, all large companies.” But with this upgrade, those customers in the middle tier, with 500 to 1,000 users, can now make their move to add DLP security protection.
Trend Micro’s DLP product is content-based, which is the current state of the art. “We’ve moved beyond the ‘users can’t copy that spreadsheet file to a USB port’ to where the product won’t allow users to copy a spreadsheet that includes, say, social security numbers or credit card information.”
DLP alerts often arise from inadvertent content handling rather than malicious activity, but this area still falls under the security umbrella. That’s one reason resellers can really benefit from this new product, says Wheeler.
“We read and scan over 300 file types right out of the box, and we monitor at multiple layers of the network infrastructure, like clients, servers, and gateways.” Resellers are needed to help customers add these features, configure software, and help their customers with security policies, adds Wheeler.
“There are three benefits for resellers,” says Wheeler. “First, it’s another chance for them to solve pressing security problems for their customers and become a trusted advisor. Second, partners can grow their own license revenue as they add DLP when they renew† OfficeScan and other products. Finally, those partners looking for ways to build their service business on top of software and licenses sales will be in a great position to help their customers.”
Around 80 percent of all Trend Micro sales go through the reseller channel, and support materials include training, analysis papers for customers, e-mail marketing templates, and videos. Pricing starts at just over $21 per user per user for 500 users, and that includes one year of support. Resellers interested in larger deployments should contact their Trend Micro contact for details.
