Data Leak Prevention vs. Enterprise 2.0Data Leak Prevention vs. Enterprise 2.0

Can IT secure information and make it easier to share?I had a head-spinning moment last week. After participating in an editorial panel on data leak prevention, I sprinted across town to meet with startups in the Enterprise 2.0 space (that is, collaboration and mashups).

As I listened to the startups make their pitch for creating collaboration tools that rely on the frictionless flow of corporate data among open environments, I flashed back to the talking points I'd put together for the panel:

More than 165 million customer records have been exposed since 2005 30-plus states have breach notification laws Class action lawsuits often follow major data loss

Part of what makes the head spin is the amount of money being poured into both data leak prevention and Enterprise 2.0. Huge piles of money are funding enterprise-focused technologies that have competing goals.

For instance, Jive Software, which makes enterprise collaboration tools, recently received a $15 million investment from Sequoia Capital. And all of the startups I met with have received millions in venture money.

Meanwhile, Code Green Networks, a data leak prevention company, has received $32 million in funding since its inception in 2004. And smaller DLP startups such as Tablus and Port Authority have been acquired by EMC and WebSense, respectively, for an estimated combined total of $130 million.

I sympathize with the IT professionals who have to bring these divergent technologies in house and then develop the policies and procedures to make them both run on the same track.