Websense Unveils Data Leak Prevention SoftwareWebsense Unveils Data Leak Prevention Software

Websense on Monday unveiled software designed to protect companies from data leaks.

The Websense Content Protection Suite V6, which the company is billing as the industry's first security software with information leak prevention capabilities, just went into beta testing. The software is designed to allow automated enforcement of who has access to what information, how the information can be used, and where it can be sent.

"Websense makes the difficult process of protecting your intellectual crown jewels easier through intelligent content security," said Gene Hodges, CEO of Websense, in a written statement. "This release is a significant milestone in our content security vision and the combination of our existing and new, strategic technologies gained through the acquisition of PortAuthority earlier this year."

Over the course of the past two years, data loss has compromised more than 150 million personal data records, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Analyst firm Forrester wrote in a recent report that a security breach can cost businesses between $90 and $305 per record.

According to Websense, the new software combines content and context awareness, leveraging Websense's URL database and its ThreatSeeker malicious content classification technology, as well as new context-based data recognition capabilities that are designed to increase detection accuracy and enable organizations to create and enforce user-specific data sharing policies.

"As a current Websense customer, we're excited that Websense is integrating two of its strongest technologies," said Roger McIlmoyle, a director at TLC Vision, in a written statement. "This new Web intelligence capability is a giant leap forward for customers looking to protect their confidential information. In particular, the new higher level of granularity and the ability to delegate incident response to the policy owner will allow the response to be issued from the right department in a timely manner."

The product is slated to be available in August.