The Hindu Business Line : Pointsec sets up India office

POINTSEC, a subsidiary of Protect Data AB of Sweden, is poised to gear up its operations in India with the establishment of a local office and the launch of a range of enterprise security products for intellectual property stored on laptop and desktop computers and mobile computing devices.

Protect Data AB is a publicly listed company with operations around the world and a market leader in enterprise solutions protecting information stored on various devices.

Pointsec, which has been placed in the Gartner leader's quadrant for mobile data protection for three years consecutively, has provided solutions to information technology majors including ITC Infotech, Wipro and Syntel.

Mr Sascha Beyer, Managing Director, Pointsec (Middle East & India), told Business Line that with the Indian economy growing rapidly, there is a commensurate demand for security within an organisation.

"Mobile computing devices such as notebook PCs, PDAs, and smart phones have become an indispensable part of the modern enterprise. Such mobile devices increasingly contain the most valuable and confidential data found in any organisation. A majority of such devices lack the physical and security access controls necessary in non-secure environments. As a consequence, data stored on such endpoint devices is much more `at risk' than transmitted data."

Describing the Indian market for the company's products, Mr Beyer said the annual spend on IT security — Rs 240 crore in 2004 (PwC) — is projected to double in 2008 [IDC].

IT security in India currently constitutes about one per cent of total IT spend as against 4.8 per cent globally.

An estimated 1.2 crore computers, 4.5 crore mobile phones and 4.6 crore USB memory sticks were in use in the country in 2004, he said.

Roughly 83 per cent of all Indian businesses have reported security breaches, with 34 per cent reporting more than three breaches.

The average cost of data loss is about Rs 4.8 lakh per incident.Among the company's products in India are Pointsec for PC, an award winning, enterprise security product for laptop and desktop computers; Pointsec for Smartphone which offers central security for sensitive information — e-mail, text messages and images — stored on Windows Mobile-based smart phones; and Pointsec for Media Encryption, which extends automatic, real-time encryption of important information to removable media. According to Mr Beyer, Pointsec holds the highest number of security certifications in its business segment, including the Common Criteria and FIPS (both 140-1 and 140-2), and is the only vendor to achieve Common Criteria EAL4.

Its global customer base includes several US federal authorities and companies such as Ericsson, NEC, Astra Zeneca, Electrolux and ABB.

The company has partnerships Nokia, HP, CSC, Microsoft, Symbian and RSA Security, among others.

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