Marty Roesch, CTO and founder of intrusion detection maven Sourcefire, has told CBR his company is unlikely to make a move into the data loss prevention (DLP) space, despite the company telling CBR it may target that market back in 2009.
Speaking to CBR back in 2009, CEO John Burris told us it would make sense for Sourcefire to broaden its portfolio into the DLP space because, "we don’t think that anyone has DLP right today. We think that we have a lead in awareness technologies with real time network awareness (RNA) and RUA – real time user awareness, which really associates a user with an IP address so that you can tell really what’s happening."
"We think that we have the ability to extend those technologies to data awareness possibly, you know, a really good name would possibly be real time data awareness or RDA. Then you have RNA, RUA, RDA as a potential," he added.
Now however Roesch says the company has no plans to follow up on the idea and release a DLP product, but refused to rule it out altogether.
"We were thinking about it, but there’s nothing that we’re talking about right now. We have plenty on our plate at the moment with the acquisition of Immunet and developing the NGFW (Next-Generation Firewall) and NGIPS (Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System). We’ve hired a lot of people to staff up our engineering team. We’re busy," he told us.
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"The DLP market… there is a market there for sure but how big it is… it’s still a relatively small market even after WikiLeaks and other things like that," Roesch added. "It’s a lower priority than our efforts around network control capabilities."
Roesch did speculate that there is the possibility of building DLP functions into Immunet’s technology and incorporating it into Sourcefire’s portfolio. "It’s largely a network-based function and we now have a host presence with the Immunet technology that allows us to look at activity on the end-point. We’re definitely in the right places to do it; it’s just a matter of figuring out a model that might be more effective than the models that have come before."
Players in the DLP space include Websense, Symantec, CA, Trend Micro, McAfee and RSA.
For the full Q&A with Sourcefire founder and CTO Marty Roesch click here.
