TEL AVIV, ISRAEL -- (Marketwire) -- 02/15/12 -- Porticor®, the leading cloud data security company delivering the only cloud-based data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud by ensuring customer keys are never exposed, today introduced the Porticor Virtual Private Data™ (Porticor VPD™) system, the industry's first solution combining data encryption with patented key management to protect critical data in public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

Until today, the requirements for securing company and customer private data stored in the cloud were not fully met, due to the issue of keys stored in the cloud not being addressed. Now, enterprises can leverage Porticor's patent-pending homomorphic split-key encryption technology to ensure the privacy of data stored in the cloud, and benefit from the industry's only cloud data protection system that delivers data security across virtual disks, databases, distributed storage and file systems.

With today's VPD product introduction, Porticor also announced its formal company launch, addressing businesses' concerns around data security when considering migrating to the cloud. See accompanying company launch announcement issued by Porticor today at: http://www.porticor.com/2012/02/cloud-data-security-launch/.

"In the cloud anyone with access to your management plane (with sufficient rights) can snapshot a volume and move it around," wrote Rich Mogull, analyst at Securosis, in his blog titled How to Encrypt IaaS Volumes. "It only takes 2-3 command lines to snapshot a drive off to object storage, make it public, and then load it up in a hostile environment. So IaaS data encryption protects volumes from snapshot cloning/exposure, protects volumes from being explored by the cloud provider (and private cloud admins), and protects volumes from being exposed by physical loss of drives."

The Porticor VPD system is made up of the Porticor Virtual Appliance and the Porticor Virtual Key Management Service, delivering the industry's highest level of data privacy in a public environment for data protection and compliance to regulations such as SOX, HIPAA, PCI DDS and GLBA, while also solving the issues raised by EU Data Protection and the U.S. Patriot Act. Using a unique, patent-pending technology, Porticor enables IaaS and PaaS cloud users to create a secured environment within minutes while completely eliminating the need to trust a security vendor or cloud provider with their encryption keys, therefore solving the biggest challenge for data encryption in the cloud -- storing the keys.

"Our firm has regulatory and good steward responsibilities for both our client data and company private information, some of which is stored in the cloud," said Steve McAtee, Senior Director of Architecture, IT Risk Management and Security at McGladrey & Pullen LLP, one of the top five U.S. providers of assurance, tax and consulting services. "Porticor's service and knowledge of the Amazon platform has been top notch. As we have examined multi-tenant environments, Porticor has been valuable for my team. Alleviating security concerns in a multi-tenant environment allows us to focus on utilizing multi-tenancy to be agile, and we see how Porticor can help us protect our private client and company data."

Unlike traditional data security solutions which require costly software licenses and operational overhead, Porticor is a cost-effective virtual appliance that requires no encryption or key management experience to encrypt customers' entire data layer with the proven AES 256-bit encryption algorithm within minutes. Unlike today's cloud encryption solutions which put customers' encryption keys in the hands of the security vendor or cloud providers, Porticor's patented Virtual Key Management service, with breakthrough split-key encryption technology, and built for homomorphic key encryption, will uniquely keep the encryption key in the customer's control, delivering a trusted cloud-based key management system.

With Porticor's VDP -- the industry's first and only product designed for homomorphic split-key encryption technology -- each data object, such as a disk or file, is encrypted with a unique key which is split in two: a master key and a specific key. The master key is common to all data objects of one application, and remains the sole possession of the application owner and is unknown to Porticor; while the second specific key is different for each data object and is stored by the Porticor Virtual Key Management Service. As the application accesses the data store, Porticor uses both parts of the key to dynamically encrypt and decrypt the data. When the master key is in the cloud, it will be homomorphically encrypted -- even when in use -- and can never be seen in the cloud.

"Protecting the privacy of employee and customer data has always been a business imperative and a compliance requirement, and today that is heightened as companies migrate to the cloud," said Ariel Dan, Porticor Co-founder, VP Sales and Marketing. "Porticor is launching with the goal of securing cloud data by leveraging a number of patented technologies and industry-first approaches. With a solution that is fully cloud-based, dynamic and elastic, Porticor enables companies of all sizes to keep their data safe, comply with regulatory standards, and streamline operations."

Availability and Pricing
The Porticor VPD system is generally available today directly from Porticor at http://www.porticor.com/pricing-plans/. There is no download required, VPD is deployed in the cloud and managed from Porticor's customer portal. Pricing starts at $27.50 per month per Porticor Virtual Appliance.

About Porticor
Porticor is the leading cloud security company delivering easy-to-use and scalable security solutions for cloud data encryption and key management. The Porticor Virtual Private Data™ (VPD) system is the industry's first solution combining data encryption with patented split-key management to protect critical data in public, private and hybrid cloud environments. Within minutes, customers can encrypt their entire data layer with the proven AES 256-bit encryption algorithm. Using breakthrough split-key encryption technology, and built for homomorphic key encryption, Porticor VPD is the only system available that offers the ease-of-use of cloud-based key management without sacrificing trust. Porticor is an official Amazon Web Services Solution provider, and supports other public clouds, and was the only cloud security semi-finalist in the AWS 2011 Startup Challenge. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and is venture backed by Glilot Capital. For more information, visit: http://www.porticor.com/.

Porticor®, Porticor Virtual Private Data™, Porticor Virtual Key Management™, Porticor VKM™ and Porticor VPD™ are trademarks of Porticor. Copyright© Porticor 2012. All other products and/or services referenced are trademarks of their respective companies.

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