Vormetric, a leader in enterprise data security for physical, virtual, big data, public, private and hybrid cloud environments, today announced the release of the Vormetric Cloud Encryption Gateway. This new product extends Vormetric's award-winning data security platform with protection for data in cloud storage environments, helping enterprises secure sensitive data residing in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) and Box environments with encryption, key management and access controls.

Enterprises have seen rapid growth in the use of cloud storage solutions by individual users and business units, but typically without the security controls required for regulated and sensitive data. As a result, they often face the difficult decision to either block access to these productivity boosting services, or to risk the exposure of sensitive data through their use. This new Vormetric offering enables organizations to offer secure and compliant Box and S3 services to their employees and partners.

"Unstructured data has no permanent home. Depending on the latest 'project du-jour' it can live in an on-premise data center, a big data repository, and increasingly in the cloud within popular SaaS apps or file synch-and-share (FSS) offerings like Box," said Garrett Bekker, senior analyst in the information security practice at 451 Research. "However, the cloud security marketplace is currently composed of mainly point products that address only a few of these potential scenarios. Vendors who can address a wide range of use cases and address both cloud and on-premise repositories of unstructured data should be well received by enterprise customers."

In the recent 2015 Vormetric Insider Threat Report – Cloud and Big Data Edition, the risks of cloud storage environments were the number one Software as a Service (SaaS) concern. 83 percent of U.S., and 72 percent of global respondents were very or extremely concerned about the protection of sensitive data within these environments.

With the Vormetric Cloud Encryption Gateway, data is encrypted before it is saved to cloud storage, while encryption keys and access policies are always under enterprise control. The solution consists of two major components: the gateway provides encryption and policy enforcement, and is paired with a Vormetric Data Security Manager (DSM) for encryption key and policy management. Both are available as virtual appliances, and the DSM may also be deployed as a FIPS 140-2 Level 2 or Level 3 certified hardware appliance. The combined solution removes the possibility of encryption key or data compromise at the cloud storage vendor location, while enabling security teams to establish the visibility and control required to keep assets secure and meet compliance requirements.

As a new extension of the Vormetric Data Security Platform, the gateway also shares policy, administration and management infrastructure with other Vormetric data security offerings – reducing enterprise management, resource and implementation costs. Other Vormetric platform offerings include transparent OS level file and volume encryption with access controls, application encryption, tokenization with data masking and third party encryption key management, as well as data access monitoring and auditing capabilities.

Key features of the Vormetric Cloud Encryption Gateway include:

• On-premise key management. Local deployment of the gateway and DSM separates encryption key storage and management from data, assuring that data can't be compromised at the cloud storage provider or compelled to be exposed by legal action without the enterprise's knowledge.
• Transparent implementation. Easy deployment with no changes required to applications or user experience.
• Highly scalable. Match capacity to demand by adding and removing Cloud Encryption Gateway appliance instances.
• Robust, persistent controls. Sensitive data may be copied, shared, used for collaboration and distributed while security teams retain control of keys and access policies on their premises.
• Detailed visibility and auditability. Detailed visibility into data access, access attempts and usage supports compliance and forensic requirements.
• Intelligent risk detection. Automatically scans connected cloud storage instances to discover unencrypted files that violate security policies, and apply appropriate controls.

"Enterprise users love cloud file storage and sharing solutions, but in using them often violate IT security and compliance rules. IT organizations can take back control by offering users the services they want, but in a way that meets enterprise security needs," said Derek Tumulak, VP of product management for Vormetric. "At the same time, solutions have to make good business sense. With this addition to the Vormetric Data Security Platform, organizations can now solve more problems with a single solution to manage protection of sensitive data across multiple data-at-rest environments."

For more information, please visit http://www.vormetric.com/products/cloud-gateway.