Thanks to Silicon Prairie News, which recently posted an interview with Palisade CEO Christian Renaud about how to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Christian is uniquely qualified to discuss the subject, he previously worked for Cisco Systems in startup-fertile San Francisco, targeting and evaluating new markets. Now he's back home in Des Moines, working to build a startup culture there.

Christian cites the entrepreneurial potential of Des Moines as one of the community’s greatest attributes. This includes the energy that’s apparent locally, the workforce and the ideas that are being developed in fields like life sciences and agriculture through the research at Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and other schools. However, we have work to develop our startup community.

"We have very strong schools, we have a lot of very good ideas in relevant fields...there's a bunch of energy," Christian explained. " We need to cultivate that, continue to cultivate it, it isn't as much the ecology here as it is [in other cities]."

Obstacles to fostering an entrepreneurial community in Des Moines include the traditional nature of business there. Des Moines is a banking, insurance, and agricultural town, which makes it more conservative and risk-averse, Renaud told the News.

Read the interview and watch a video excerpt: Christian Renaud talks about the needs of a startup community

It's a two-part interview. Previously: Christian Renaud of Palisade Systems talks technology, raising capital

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

Gibson General Hospital got more than it expected when it started using PacketSure™ data loss prevention. The solution stopped an attack in progress.

And that was just the demo.

Gibson General was looking into using PacketSure™ from Palisade Systems to help the hospital comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as manage network traffic and Web usage. The hospital took advantage of the free secure assessment that Palisade offers to some prospective customers.

On the very first day of the secure assessment, Gibson General discovered unauthorized use of ICQ, an outdated instant messaging technology. Following up that information led to discovery of a gang of hackers breaking into the hospital's network.

Read all about it here: PacketSure™ detects attack on Gibson General Hospital. And that was just the demo.

And check out our other case studies:

Palisade Gives Missouri City Set-And-Forget Protection

Bank Mutual uses PacketSure's™ solution to identify and protect confidential information on their network

Health Fitness Corporation's use of PacketSure™ helps grow their business

Pathways Community Behavorial uses PacketSure™ to help them remain compliant

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

Last week, Palisade Systems was one of the sponsors of the Security Bloggers Meet-Up at this year's RSA Conference. The Meet-Up - apropos of a security event -was all secretive until the last moment, pretty much to make sure that it was attended by security bloggers. The event was held at Jillian's, and was a casual event in the pool hall to meet the people we've engaged the past year, have our logo up there for people to see and talk DLP and Palisade with people. 

And let people know what we are up to in the data loss prevention space, and why we're the leader in small and medium sized enterprise. But in a casual way with beer and pool.

And we did that - and it was fun, and it was a great event to see people we've emailed and spoken to, but rarely met in real life or seen face-to-face. 

Now, we all have read about how media is changing and how important bloggers are for companies. An interesting article from C/Net and ITDatabase highlights the importance of new media (or bloggers or podcasts or whatever term you want to use), particularly for the enterprise IT. While enterprise tech is the fastest growing segment of technology, it tends to be less reported on as it's not as "sexy". Which is true - B2B technology is not as sexy as consumer electronics and technology but it tends to really drive the economy, and keeps corporations safe and secure, which extends to keeping the public safe and secure. 

So, since the mainstream media - except on huge data loss stories - tends to ignore enterprise tech, the bloggers - corporate, security, in-house - write about the enterprise and are more and more becoming the go-to people on information. 

The small City of O'Fallon, Missouri (pop. 35,000) needed Web filtering for municipal employees, and turned to Palisade PacketSure™ to do the job. They were happy with what they got from us, so they came back to Palisade for Data Loss Prevention, to ensure the safety of confidential data such as Social Security and credit card numbers.

We wrote about O'Fallon's experience with Palisade in our latest case study. Highlights of Palisade's experience:

Read all about it here: Palisade Givs Missouri City Set-And-Forget Protection (PDF download).

And check out some of our other case studies (they're all PDF downloads):

Bank Mutual uses PacketSure's™ solution to identify and protect confidential information on their network

Health Fitness Corporation's use of PacketSure™ helps grow their business

Pathways Community Behavorial uses PacketSure™ to help them remain compliant

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

At Palisade, we've built our business providing Data Loss Prevention in the form of an appliance. The PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention (DLP) appliance is dead simple, it installs in less than an hour.

For organizations who don't want to install any hardware at all, Palisade has partnerships with Managed Service Providers (MSPs). These are companies that manage overall security for other organizations. The MSPs deploy PacketSure(tm) Managed DLP in their environment, enabling them to provide robust DLP service to many organizations without the need for dedicated hardware at the customer network.

Many organizations leverage Managed Service Providers already for hosted email, anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall, and other security services. Having data loss prevention services provided by their existing managed service provider simplifies an organization's network administration and can result in considerable cost savings as well.

Palisade CEO Christian Renaud discussed Data Loss Prevention as a managed service as part of a brief but wide-ranging interview with Silicon Prairie News. Visit their Web site for a write-up of the interview and a video excerpt. ("Christian Renaud of Palisade Systems talks technology, raising capital").

"The managed service provider work that we started last year is really where we see the majority of the growth coming from, and the demand coming from," Christian said. DLP started as an issue for the Fortune 500, but Palisade is now seeing demand from smaller organizations, with regulation as a driver, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), and more.

To find out more about our MSP offerings, visit the PacketSure™ Managed DLP page on our Web site.

Christian also discussed the history of the company, customers' DLP needs, and raising capital in Iowa.

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

Palisade Systems' CEO Christian Renaud recently took part in a webinar about Data Loss Prevention, hosted by analysts the Radicati Group.

Christian described the features that companies should look for when shopping for a DLP solution. Companies need to ensure the tool can protect "data in motion" -- information leaving the company network through e-mail, the Web, instant messaging, and other channels. And the solution also needs to protect "data at rest," which is stored on company desktops and servers. The solution should be easy to install and get running, with the ability to make changes to the configuration and fine-tune over time as the IT manager becomes more aware of the organization's needs. Also, the solution needs robust reporting, to help the organization get a handle on what's happening on its network. Reporting can also help get organizational buy-in for security measures, by demonstrating need.

And the solution needs flexibility, the ability to fingerprint proprietary information such as source code, or an NFL team's playbook, to ensure that information doesn't get sent out over the network.

The solution should be port- and protocol-independent. Earlier DLP solutions focused on particular ports and protocols, which often resulted in data leaks simply shifting to other channels. "Traffic is wiggly that way, it is a little squirrely, you have to look at all the traffic and identify people who are trying to circumvent the system," Christian said.

IT staff often make the same mistakes in deploying DLP. Palisades' customers are typically small organizations, with IT staff understaffed and under-resourced. They don't have the time to plan ahead and determine what data needs protecting, and how to get corporate buy-in for DLP efforts, making sure there are plans in place for what to do when a data leak is detected.

"Having that plan ahead of time on how you're going to roll it out -- not just put in the box and walk away -- and how you're going to deal with the losses you find, are some of the things organizations haven't considered," Christian said.

Christian was joined by representatives of two other DLP vendors.

Find out more about product offerings, organizational awareness of the need for DLP, how DLP fits into an overall security strategy, how DLP is affected by privacy rules, and more.

Get the slides and recording of the webinar on data loss prevention from the Radicati Group.

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

The Federal Trade Commission sent out warning letters to about 100 companies, warning them about sensitive and confidential data found on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

The Washington Post has the story:

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it has uncovered widespread data breaches at companies, schools and local governments whose employees are swapping music, software and movie files over the Internet.

The consumer protection agency said it sent nearly 100 letters to organizations where information on customers and employees -- including health and financial data and Social Security and driver's license numbers -- leaked through peer-to-peer Web services. It warned that the security breaches could lead to identity fraud or theft, and it recommended that the groups review their policies and inform affected users.

Computerworld has more. The FTC says it will collect information from companies to see if they've violated data privacy laws, but that doesn't mean the FTC plans formal complaints. "The FTC's actions have been a long time coming and highlight the growing concerns over inadvertent leaks on P2P networks, said Eric Johnson, a professor of operations management at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business," according to Computerworld.

Computerworld has more background on past data leaks on peer-to-peer networks, some of them "sensational." These include a leak of security information for the First Family, including safe houses and presidential motorcade routes.

AFP has more:

The FTC declined to identify the companies or organizations involved, but said they were both "private and public entities, including schools and local governments."

The companies and organizations ranged in size from "businesses with as few as eight employees to publicly held corporations employing tens of thousands," the FTC said in a statement.

"Companies should take a hard look at their systems to ensure that there are no unauthorized P2P file-sharing programs and that authorized programs are properly configured and secure," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said.

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

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.

The usual problems of data leaks are bad enough: Compromised customer and employee privacy, lost reputation, government fines, and lawsuits. For Shell, the damage is worse, as the contact database for 176,000 staff and contractors at the firm were copied and forwarded to activists opposed to the company.

Richard Wiseman, chief ethics and compliance officer at Royal Dutch Shell, wrote to staff last week after the breach emerged.

He said: "The Global Address List, containing contact information of everyone in Shell and some contractors, joint ventures and other third parties, has been downloaded without authorisation and distributed to some external parties. We do not know who did this. We are investigating and are raising this theft of information with the relevant data protection authorities."

The company played down the security implications of the loss - it is phone and email details rather than real-world addresses.

The database went to environmental and human rights campaigners.

Those behind the leak claimed they were members of the company attempting to mount a "peaceful corporate revolution."

The email was accompanied by a 170-page covering note explaining that it was being circulated by a group of "116 concerned employees" from the UK, US and Netherlands.

Shell told Sky News the contact list was genuine but that it believed the email was a hoax.

A spokesman said: "The email was brought to our attention by an external stakeholder. We're looking into it and we do not believe it is genuine."

The cover note said the attackers wanted to "highlight the damage allegedly caused by Shell's operations in Nigeria."

Palisade's PacketSure™ Data Loss Prevention appliance can help secure confidential data on the network. View a video demo, or get a live demo, or get a free Secure Assessment.

Palisade Systems has a very distinct place in the data loss prevention (DLP) market: we concentrate on the small and medium sized enterprise. We focus on that market segment because they need DLP just as much as the big guys, and likely even moreso. For the small and medium businesses - especially in healthcare, education, financial markets - you aren't looking at massive organizations that can snap their fingers and implement a DLP solution, but businesses that look at each detail and know they need to be compliant with PCI, FERPA, HIPAA/HITECH and other regulations.

Today, we announced the first of many reseller announcements with Secure Content Technologies. Based in Ohio, the company focuses on the business and education segments that are key drivers for Palisade, and in markets that we target. Working with Secure Content Technologies - and the about 20 other resellers we have signed on the past quarter - we are able to work with resellers across the country and provide them with the best DLP solution for the small and medium market, as well as help them continue to position themselves as IT leaders in their regions with various programs that we provide our resellers.

As noted, this is one of many reseller releases in the queue right now, and something that we continue to pursue. Our reseller program brings many opportunities to IT firms, including participating in our company’s marketing initiatives, PSI Registration and Secure Assessment Programs, Extended Terms Programs and sales, training and other support that brings resellers into the Palisade family. 

Continue to watch the reseller space, and let us know if you are interested!