Company: PerspecSys, McLean, VA
Entry Submitted By: Racepoint Group
Company Description: PerspecSys provides privacy, residency and security solutions for the cloud. Backed by leading venture capital funds, PerspecSys’ Cloud Protection Gateway solutions permit cloud applications to be easily adopted throughout the enterprise.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Cloud Application/Service

Nomination Title: PerspecSys Cloud Data Protection Gateway

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

Ask any CIO, CTO or CISO about their top concerns these days and they still say “the Cloud”.  While there’s no question regarding cloud benefits – increased productivity, scalability and cost-savings -- there’s also no denying the risks, especially with data security. 

At PerspecSys, we saw a real opportunity to help companies protect their mission critical data so they could easily and confidently adopt cloud computing. So, we developed the PerspecSys Cloud Data Protection Gateway – officially launched in 2011 and updated in 2012. Using tokenization and encryption technology, the Gateway delivers data privacy, residency and security capabilities that enable enterprise customers to use the most popular cloud applications and still protect their sensitive business data by keeping it within their control at all times.

How it Works:

Installed inside an organization’s data center or at its IaaS provider, the Gateway resides transparently between the application and its users, intercepting sensitive data before it is passed to the cloud. The sensitive data that enters the cloud is tokenized or encrypted, ensuring that it is meaningless to anyone who should hack the data in transit or in the cloud.

No data is shared in “the clear” outside of network control; data is secured on a field-by-field basis. This is a key capability, increasing regulatory and compliance requirements, which often dictate that sensitive data cannot leave a corporation’s walls, making it impossible to fully benefit from the cloud. Our solution removes that barrier. Furthermore, data privacy regulations, such as ITAR, frequently require the use of extremely strong encryption techniques. Our solution solves this issue as well.

Key Benefits:

In addition, the Gateway is a platform that preserves critical end-user functionality of multiple cloud applications, including searching, reporting, and e-mailing.  Traditional encryption/tokenization approaches “break” cloud SaaS functionality because the data becomes “unreadable” by the cloud application, but PerspecSys’ patented approach addresses this critical usability issue.

Lastly, it is simple to deploy and use.  There is an administrative dashboard through which data protection policies are easily configured, and plug-in Adapter modules are available for integration with popular cloud applications like Oracle CRM On Demand, Salesforce.com and ServiceNow. 

Sales Results:

As a privately-held company we don’t publicly disclose revenue figures, however in the few years our solution has been on the market we’ve closed dozens of customers across North America, Europe and Asia in key verticals including:

• Banking: PerspecSys helps financial institutions like Citibank and BNP satisfy strict data residency requirements on sensitive personal banking details by tokenizing the information before it is sent to the cloud for processing and storage, allowing these organizations to meet jurisdictional regulations while adopting the cloud.

• Manufacturing: Companies, including General Electric, use our gateway solution to meet multiple compliance requirements across their diversified business units.

• Healthcare: Organizations like IEHP and Hollister, Inc., charged with maintaining security and privacy around Personal Health Information (PHI) per the guidelines defined by HIPAA, have turned to PerspecSys to tackle the thorny issue of placing this information in the cloud.

•Public Sector: The UK Post Office relies on PerspecSys to help them meet stringent data privacy and security requirements associated with regional and federal governments.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

David Canellos is president and CEO of PerspecSys Inc., and the driving force behind the company and Gateway solution.  He and his executive team are singularly focused on removing the key barriers that inhibit companies from adopting the cloud – data security and control.  With over a decade of experience in security technology, Canellos has developed a unique perspective on integrating security and control solutions with business strategies to drive an increasingly connected workplace.     
   
Prior to PerspecSys, David held executive positions at security and content management organizations including Irdeto Worldwide, Cramer Systems (now Amdocs) and Cloakware (acquired by Irdeto), where he served as Presdient and COO.  Prior to heading up Cloakware, David led sales management and business development functions at Oracle Corporation, Versatility and SAIC.

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