This past week, C/Net wrote a post on how compliance, rather than protection, is the focus of most corporations when it comes to security. The report (PDF), commissioned by RSA and Microsoft, found that corporate IP is 62 percent of a company's assets, but most security programs focus on compliance rather than data protection.

But, if you take a step back, it makes sense. Corporations are in business to make money. Security purchasing is one of those things that does not affect the bottom line ... until compliance (and those pesky fines) come into play. It's like healthcare - very few of us do preventative medicine (the yearly check-ups and all that fun stuff). Nope, we wait until we're sick ... or are forced to go to the doctor. Or taxes - none of us want to pay taxes, but come April 15, we feel compelled to pay them. We comply with the government regulations; for corporations, they comply with government regulations as well, and spend on security reactively (to the 

That's us - we're the compliance folks. We help small- and medium-sized enterprise companies make sure they are compliant with a wide variety of regulations, ranging from HIPAA, HITECH, FERPA, PCI and others. We are in the data loss prevention business to help make sure companies stay on the up and up with compliance issues. 

No, I'm not discounting that corporations need to invest in security beyond compliance - companies need to have full, robust security to protect their intellectual property and data. Data loss prevention is part of that mix; besides making sure that information is not mistakenly sent out, there is that protection that information is not purposely sent out as well. 

So Palisade Systems is your compliance cop that helps you stay secure. 

Recently, our internal customer advocate wrote about El Paso Independent School District using Palisade Systems PacketSure for their data loss prevention needs. Today, the press release was sent out over the Wire to various educational and security reporters, touting the relationship between Palisade and EPISD.

It is a testament to our internal staff that we have long-standing customers like EPISD using our products, and having the confidence in our products to continue to use us as we grow with their security needs. With the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), school districts around the nation had to begin thinking beyond the basic IT structure of security but beyond: how to keep data secure and make sure that information was not accidentally (or, in the case of student-athletes, purposely) leaked or lost to the vapor. 

When EPISD set up a security assessment from Palisade, they got to see first hand the information being sent out, data that was being captured in their test of the PacketSure application. It is this data that FERPA is concerned with, a pillar in our compliance to help school districts stay on the right side of the Act and protect students, administrators, teachers and staff.

 We are happy to be working with EPISD and help keep them secure. We look forward to continuing to work with school districts, and helping new districts be DLP safe.