From the CloudLock Blog

If you were to ask anyone in IT or data security circles to define DLP, chances are they would immediately say “data loss or data leakage prevention.” You’d likely hear about solutions that prevent end-users from inappropriately sharing sensitive data with an unauthorized party. From wikipedia:

“In data leakage incidents, sensitive data is disclosed to unauthorized personnel either by malicious intent or inadvertent mistake. Such sensitive data can come in the form of private or company information, intellectual property (IP), financial or patient information, credit-card data, and other information depending on the business and the industry.”

Wikipedia Definition of DLP

When it comes to on-premise data, companies have spent incredible sums of money to prevent employees from exposing confidential information, implementing in-band solutions that stop users from sharing, often resulting in overly restrictive policies. And in a world where “collaboration” meant emailing attachments back and forth, this type of DLP (while annoying), was effective.

How Does DLP Apply to the Cloud?

Fast forward a decade, and enter the cloud. Businesses today rely on real-time collaboration, both internally and externally with partners, suppliers, customers, and other third parties. Today, companies are flocking to cloud-based productivity suites like Google Apps to enable employees to collaborate in real-time, due to the cost and pain of sending multiple versions of attachments back and forth to accomplish the most basic tasks.

But the need for DLP remains. Just because data is now stored in the cloud, the importance of making sure that sensitive data is shared properly doesn’t disappear. In fact, due to the ease of collaboration with anyone, anywhere, having the ability to monitor and control how documents are shared becomes even more critical.

A New Kind of DLP for Google Docs, Drive, and Sites

Simply applying the same methods of sharing prevention for cloud data as on-premise data kills one of the biggest benefits of the cloud: collaboration. What’s the point of moving to the cloud if you’re going to throw out the real-time collaboration benefits?

Instead of using in-band prevention, why not use near real-time notification? Instead of simply stopping sharing, what if you could set up an automatic, content and context-aware policy to alert admins and data owners when a policy has been violated? What about creating a much more intelligent rule, stating that the marketing department can share documents externally with trusted vendors, but sharing with a competitor should sound an alarm and automatically change sharing permissions?

It’s time to change the way we think about Data Loss Prevention in the cloud. It’s time to embrace the concept of real-time collaboration and universal access, while enacting smart policies to alert and take action when data is shared improperly.

It’s time for DLP that is less paranoid, but equally vigilant when protecting data. DLP that allows employees to do their jobs, but keeps companies from losing the data that keeps them in business.

My monthly column for VentureFizz.com is now live:

First Look: Cogent Mobile

Sales reps spend a lot of their time on the road, talking to clients and prospects, and gathering information that should end up in a CRM. But since they are humans, the longer it takes between talking with the client and entering info into systems like Salesforce.com, the greater the chance they’ll forget something useful.

Between the handshake and elevator ride… to the rental car… driven to a hotel room… to pop open the laptop; there are many obstacles that could lead to forgetting an important detail about a customer interaction. On the flipside, when you don’t have account information at your fingertips, there are times when not being at your laptop separates you from information that could help in the sales process.

Cambridge-based Cogent Mobile wants to make the smartphone a bridge between the sales rep and the CRM, and it makes it easy via voice commands.

Read the full column here…

A few days ago, I went to a restaurant that had Sam Adams 26.2 on draft and loved it. It’s a very limited brew to coincide with the Boston Marathon. I’ve been looking to find it at stores, but unfortunately it’s only available on draft at select restaurants along (or near) the marathon route.

But I didn’t know that last night, and went to the store to see if they had any. Nope. Instead, a six pack caught my eye.

Since 1995, Sam Adams has been holding homebrew contests, with the winners’ brews distributed by Sam Adams. 2 home brewers and 1 Sam Adams employee are chosen each year. This year’s winners:

• Corey Martin’s A Dark Night in Munich is a perfect balance between deep roasted malt character and a smooth, creamy finish. To develop his recipe and the rich color of the beer, Corey used a “staining” process in which he powdered the roasted malts and added them early on in the brewing process. The rich Munich malt sweetness comes through in the aroma of this traditional Bavarian wheat beer and light caramel notes round out the brew.

  My Take: I really enjoyed this dark, heavy-looking beer that was full of favor. It was much smoother and refreshing than the color indicated, and the tastes changed between malty and an almost citrus flavor at the end. Really an original. The best out of the three.

• Fred Hessler has worked as a member of the Samuel Adams team since 2008. Derf’s Secret Alt is Fred’s take on the traditional Dusseldorf Altbier style. It has a robust, full-bodied and well-hopped taste, with a surprising balance between bitterness and nutty-malty sweetness. Fred’s brew is packed with strong notes of chocolate and roasted malt. It has the flavor complexity of an ale and the hop makeup and creamy head of a pils.

  My Take: Full-bodied and well-hopped is right. I loathe IPAs, but this beer stopped just short of being too hoppy for my taste.

• Joe Formanek’s Five Crown Imperial Stout is a malt-forward Russian Imperial Stout that combines rich malt character with roasted barley and chocolate notes, to balance the bitter hop undertones. Harnessing more than 20 years of homebrewing experience, Joe’s full-bodied stout has a sweet aroma with fruit esters.

  My Take: I’m a sucker for a stout, and this one didn’t disappoint. If you thought of an oatmeal stout as an oatmeal cookie, this imperial stout would be a dark chocolate, chocolate chip cookie with nuts.

I just published a post on MarketingStartups.com detailing the behind-the-scenes activities on the day we announced our Series B funding:

This morning I am glued to my monitor, tracking the news coverage and tweeting, +1ing, LinkedIn-ing, facebooking, and whatever -ing you can think of related to a press day. The reason? At CloudLock, we just announced the closing of our Series B Funding Round.

Since much of what happens behind the scenes is a mystery (maybe that’s making this sound too interesting), I thought I’d take the time to outline what happens up t0 and after the release of a funding round.

Read the full post here.

This morning we’ve announced that we’ve closed $8.7 million in series B funding to expand to new markets and grow our team to meet customer demands.

The full press release is below, but before getting into that, we’d like to point to our careers page. One of the main benefits of the round is the ability to focus on bringing the area’s top talent to CloudLock. We’ll be constantly updating this page in the coming days, so if you’re looking to join a rapidly growing startup working on a huge opportunity we want to talk to you.

The full release:

CloudLock Closes $8.7 Million in Series B Funding to Expand Its Cloud Data Security Solutions to New Markets

Ascent Venture Partners Joins Existing Investor Cedar Fund

WALTHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CloudLock, the software company securing enterprise cloud data, today announced it has raised $8.7 million in a Series B funding round from new investor Ascent Venture Partners and existing investor Cedar Fund.

The latest financing will be used to expand the company’s engineering divisions to keep up with rising customer demand, extend its solutions to new platforms and accelerate CloudLock’s domestic and international sales efforts. As one of the first Security-as-a-Service companies in the world, CloudLock is committed to investing in innovation around its core competency, cloud data security services. CloudLock will focus much of its employee growth in its new headquarters in Waltham, MA.

Luke Burns, Partner with Ascent Venture Partners, is leading Ascent’s investment in CloudLock and will join the Company’s Board of Directors. Ascent, an investor in innovative enterprise technology for more than 25 years, believes CloudLock is poised to extend its leadership position in cloud eGRC, a segment of the market enjoying tremendous growth.

“Organizations moving sensitive data to the cloud are realizing the shift requires new processes for IT control,” Burns said. “Increased collaboration is a major benefit of the Cloud, but companies lose sight and control of the data being shared, both internally and externally. By helping secure Google Apps and other collaborative cloud-based applications, CloudLock is bridging a critical, emerging security gap.”

CloudLock achieved substantial growth in 2011, adding hundreds of large customers with over one million users under license to its subscription service. Last year, CloudLock also partnered with leading cloud VARs and resellers, further positioning itself for continued growth in 2012.

“While we saw tremendous growth in 2011, we’re already seeing more than double the volume of sales in 2012,” said Gil Zimmermann, co-founder and CEO, CloudLock. “As more enterprises move their sensitive data to the cloud, we will continue to build on CloudLock’s core governance, risk management and compliance features to help customers cost-effectively extend their data security to their cloud data repositories. This funding will help us continue to attract the premier talent that are looking for the opportunity to lead the charge in the fast- growing Security-as-a-Service market”

“We are excited to continue supporting CloudLock, having worked with the company’s outstanding team to develop and go to market with the industry’s first cloud document security solution,” noted Dorin Miller, member of CloudLock’s Board of Directors and Venture Partner at Cedar fund, CloudLock’s Pre-Seed, Seed investor and participant in the Series B Round. “CloudLock’s suite of cloud security solutions meets a pressing need by enterprises to secure and govern data in the cloud. We are thrilled about CloudLock’s accomplishments to date and are excited to continue supporting its growth.”

About CloudLock

CloudLock helps enterprises extend their data security practices and policies to the cloud. CloudLock’s suite of security applications give businesses the controls and visibility they need to take advantage of the collaboration benefits of public cloud offerings, without sacrificing on security. The largest Google Apps customers in the world trust CloudLock to secure their data. For more information about the company or reseller opportunities call (781) 996-4332 or visit http://www.cloudlock.com.

About Ascent Venture Partners

Ascent Venture Partners (www.ascentvp.com) is dedicated to investing in innovation for the enterprise. In backing more than 100 early-stage, emerging technology companies since 1985, Ascent has remained committed to its mission of partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs striving to build innovative market leaders. Ascent’s investments have yielded powerful results generating more than $10 billion in enterprise value, which speaks to the firm’s deep knowledge, experience, commitment, and networks. The Ascent investment team manages five venture funds with total commitments of more than $450 million, and is located in Boston, Mass.

About Cedar Fund

Cedar Fund is an international venture capital firm with offices in Israel and Boston that invests in high technology Israel-related companies. With its investment track record and over $325 million under management, Cedar Fund is among the most notable and active venture firms focusing on Israel-related investments. Cedar Fund invests in outstanding entrepreneurs pursuing high growth markets with distinguished technologies in enterprise software, Internet, mobile, digital media, CleanTech, networking and telecommunications. While Cedar invests in all stages, it concentrates on early stage, including Pre-Seed® (pioneered by Cedar and includes companies such as BigBand and Onaro), seed and first round (including companies such as Guardium). For more information about Cedar Fund, please visit www.cedarfund.com.

Contacts

fama PR
Jennifer Sricharoenchaikit, 617-986-5023
jennifer@famapr.com

I don’t mean that writing is not easy a majority of the time. I mean writing a majority of the time is difficult.

Coming into the new year I had all intentions of writing every day. I’ve not done that. But I haven’t given up. I need to get into the habit of writing daily again. I’ll figure that out.

For now, I’ve got nothing, but here’s an image I saw on Google+ today:

We haven’t really said much because there’s so much that can (and does) go wrong in the process of buying a house. Our situation is no exception.

Last night after going through 23 pages of the inspection report with some experts, we decided to go for it. Today we’re headed to do the formal mortgage application, and if things all go as planned, we’ll close on the house in February. If that’s the case, we’ll likely move in by late March.

We’ll have to get someone to sublet our current place from April to June, so if you know anyone that is looking for a sublet in Waltham, please let us know.

This is a story about attempted escape, potential conspiracy, intrigue, and finally freezing, shit-footed justice. Strap in, folks. Grab some popcorn.

Picture the scene. It is Christmas in upstate New York, and I am staying at my parents’ house with my wife Randi and our dog Steve (pictured at top right). My parents have a large black lab named Coal, and he and Steve constantly run around the backyard without incident. But Christmas night was a bit different.

My parents had gone to bed, and I was about to do the same. Randi was on a couch downstairs, and I took the dog out to….you know.

a. The Setup
As I let him out on the porch, he walked down the steps and immediately peed.

b. Making a Break for it
Steven then sprinted to the far right corner of the yard. Originally I thought that he was trying to get rid of some of the ham he’d eaten, but after yelling his name, whistling, and snapping, I realized that poster of Rita Hayworth was part of his escape plan.

As you can see, my parents have a pool, and the area around and leading up to said pool is concrete. Since I was in shorts and a tee shirt, barefoot, and it was almost midnight on Christmas, I ran down the path to see where he was. It’s hard to see in the above picture, but the letter “b” is resting on a fence. When I got to the fence, I could hear his tags jingling, but couldn’t see him. I knew he’d escaped.

I had some choices. I could jump the fence and try to find him, or I could wake Randi up, knowing that he always responds to her voice.

I woke up Randi.

We both ran outside, barefoot, and I pointed her to “c”, a gate on the fence. We both ran to the gate and yelled for Steve, and because it was her yelling, he ran over to us. We apprehended the escapee. But the story isn’t over.

Earlier I mentioned that my parents have a big black lab. Well, big black labs leave very large, um, deposits on a lawn. And they freeze and become very hard. Randi and I ran about 15 yards through a minefield of frozen dog shit in our bare feet to get our stupid escape artist Corgi that night.

We then had to go into the house, stand the bathtub to wash dog shit off of our feet at 12:15 all while being quiet to make sure we didn’t wake my mom who had to work the next morning.

Of course, the dog was smiling the whole time.

After interrogation, we came up with a couple of scenarios to explain the escape:

1. Steve planned to escape and then run away with Randi. See, he was the only one that forbid our wedding, as Steve wanted to marry Randi. In fact, in his Christmas card to Randi, he photoshopped my head out of one of our wedding pictures and added his own:

2. He’d been planning his escape the whole time. The entire time he was outside running around with Coal, he’d been looking for weaknesses in the perimeter fence. Though he’d found the perfect escape route, he wanted to wait for the cover of night to make his move. He knew that his night vision was better than ours, and he took advantage of the mismatch.

3. He saw an animal, and took off after it. Steve firmly believes that if he was off leash, he could catch any squirrel regardless of whether the squirrel was up a tree. This was his big chance, so he had to take it.

I’m not sure what story to believe, but we’ll be sending our reports to the disciplinary committee and he’ll likely spend some time in seg-u.

It’s a fair question.

I have this blog, a bunch of others, and I start with a bang and my momentum fizzles out completely. The conventional wisdom dictates that you should keep a blog tied to a theme. I have a blog about what I do at work at marketingstartups.com. I had another where I wrote with a pseudonym to conceal my identity because of the whole “don’t write anything your future employers might find offensive” school of thought.

Rather than having 5 seldom-updated but perfectly focused blogs, I’m going to make this blog the KFC bowl of blogs. I’m going to toss everything in here and see what happens. What do I have to lose, right?

Over on the CloudLock blog, I’ve posted an announcement about the launch of the Security Policy Engine for Google Docs and Sites. Our intern, Joel Kennedy, created some excellent graphics that do a great job of simply illustrating a complicated concept: