This is the second year Fasoo participated in the IBM Insight conference in Las Vegas and by the reaction of customers, IBM employees and other vendors, we made a big splash.  Enterprise Digital Rights Management and data-centric security for sensitive information appear to be at the top of many people’s minds.

The event had over 13,000 attendees from all over the world and focused on Analytics, Big Data, Content Management, Information Governance and Security.  There was a major focus on using analytics to understand and predict trends for business and to help eliminate security threats.  Cloud and mobile transcend these categories as business has become mobile, fluid and unfortunately more dangerous.  There was also a big presence of the Internet of Things, as more organizations are extending business models through wearable and more autonomous devices.

Fasoo partners The Dayhuff Group and Neocol joined us as we showed how to strengthen security for content as users localize it from databases, download it from IBM ECM repositories, create it locally or share it with external parties, in the cloud or on mobile devices.  With the new IBM relationship with Box, many customers are worried about protecting sensitive information regardless of location or device.  They like sharing information easily, but need to make sure its always protected.

Security presentations focused on insider threats and external hackers or advanced persistent threats (APT) causing a lot of problems for companies.  A lot of companies today are terrified that a trusted insider may inadvertently share sensitive files in the cloud or leave them on a mobile device that is lost or stolen.  One presentation referred to the weakest link in your security as the person who does something accidentally.  You can have all the firewalls, end-point encryption and data loss prevention systems in the world, but it won’t stop a privileged user that does something stupid.

Bill Blake presented “Closing the Threat Gap: A 21st Century Approach to Minimizing Risk” in the Solution Expo theater to a good group of people.  I had a conversation with one of the presentation attendees about protecting reports as users download them from an ERP system.  He knows the data is controlled inside the system, but he loses visibility to it when localized in a spreadsheet or PDF.  We discussed how Fasoo can protect the files once downloaded by encrypting it and assigning a dynamic security policy to it.  He can always control that report no matter where it is.

Dayhuff had its annual Insight After Party at the Ri Ra Irish Pub in the Mandalay Bay shoppes.  We were in a private room, but could hear all the fun throughout the place.  There was a great band playing that got everyone in a dancing mood.  It was great to discuss business and personal things with the Dayhuff staff, IBM staff and lots of customers.  It’s always amazing that no matter where you live, you can always find someone who shares your love of great beer, loves or hates your sports teams or has similar experiences to you.  There is nothing better than getting to know someone over a pint.

Neocol talked about its SmarterDLP solution at Insight this year to help solve a major problem that every organization faces.  Combining Fasoo EDRM, IBM StoredIQ and some of its own technology, Neocol can help a company search for sensitive content in files share, document repositories, on a user PC and numerous other locations, and then lock it in place. This solves two problems.  Finding sensitive information and then encrypting it with a security policy immediately to ensure that only authorized users can access it.  The reality today is that organizations have so much unstructured content in so many locations, they don’t know where to start looking for the most critical information.

Customer interest was high during the Solution Expo and through numerous conversations at many of the informal parties, meals and other opportunities to interact.  I spoke with one gentleman who needed to make sure that documents involved in legal cases were made inaccessible once the case was over.  Today he has to get validation from all involved that they destroyed the case documents; that’s a tough one.  One woman needed to make sure she could control any PII (personally identifiable information) or financial data that was downloaded from an IBM Content Manager system.  I also talked to a few manufacturing companies that wanted to protect process information and parts drawings as they shared them internally and with subcontractors.  A lot of people were amazed that we can lock and control these files no matter where they are.

We want to thank everyone whom came to the booth and made it a successful event.  We look forward to it next year.