The Hindu Business Line : Reconnex offers products to help prevent data leakage

Pune, Aug. 22 Is data leak protection, the next big thing in security? An average cost of data breach is $4.8 million; estimates of intellectual property lost by US companies per year is $250 billion; and global losses are to the tune of $512 billion with the US accounting for 50 per cent of the theft.

According to a Gartner study, the data leakage segment currently around $150 million is growing at 70 per cent CAGR and would touch $1 billion by 2009-10.According to Mr Anand A. Kekre, Country Manager, Reconnex India Pvt Ltd, about 10 million individuals are victims of identity theft every year.

Mr Anand told presspersons that Reconnex Corporation, a California-based data loss prevention appliances company, has opened its research and development centre in Pune in March this year. It has about 20 employees on its rolls and is looking to double by the end of this year.

Company profile

The company, which began its operations in 2003, has been backed by tier-I venture capitalists — Norwest Ventures, August Capital, Outlook Ventures and Levensohn partners.

It has so far received $40 million in three rounds as funding. The first round of funding was utilised for engineering, second for sales and engineering and the third round which was received about three months ago, is being utilised for marketing, sales and sustaining its engineering practice.

Discover, one of Reconnex’s flagship product which detects, prevents, monitors, capture and control data leakage, has been developed at its Pune office. The other products include IGuard appliance (turnkey solution for information monitoring and protection to safeguard against and remediate electronic risks) and Insight Console (designed to simplify administration, and provide a centralised interface for managing all security policies as well alerting and reporting).The company is into offering an appliance which has the software code for prevention of data leakage.

Each appliance is in the module format and is priced in the US market ranging between $30,000-$35,000. He noted that there would be different pricing for the Indian market which is expected to be announced by the next quarter.

Reconnex is also exploring other markets — Europe, West Asia and the APAC for its products.