Egnyte appoints new CSO, unveils security roadmap

Today at the RSA Conference, Egnyte formally introduced Kris Lahiri as the company’s new Chief Security Officer and unveiled his FY14 security roadmap, which details the company’s plans to raise the global standard for secure file sharing in the enterprise.

Kris Lahiri is a co-founder of Egnyte and was VP of Operations before moving into his new role as CSO. Prior to Egnyte, he spent many years in the design and deployment of large-scale infrastructure for Fortune 100 customers of Valdero and KPMG Consulting. Kris has a B.Tech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology – Banaras and an M.S. from the University of Cincinnati.

Lahiri’s plans include adding key security enhancements and integrations for secure deployment options, data privacy and industry standards.

Recent, alarming revelations about the NSA’s PRISM and Muscular programs have put security and privacy top-of-mind for businesses. In addition to government spying news, major data leaks, hacking incidents and widespread outages are forcing businesses to evaluate the wisdom of adopting a cloud-only model for sharing and storing their business files.

Lahiri’s 2014 security roadmap focuses on enhancements and integrations to provide Egnyte customers with secure access to 100 percent of their business files from any device, regardless of where those files physically reside.

“Egnyte is the only file-sharing solution built from the ground up to meet the needs of the enterprise,” said Egnyte co-founder and CSO Kris Lahiri. “As the market evolves, so do the needs of our customers, and nothing is more vital to a business than the security of its most valuable asset – its business data. Combined with the varying industry standards in which businesses are required to comply, we understand how crucial it is to share our roadmap with our customers so they understand how Egnyte plans to meet all of their security needs now and into the future.”

Deployment

According to a recent survey from Enterprise Strategy Group, 97 percent of cloud adopters prefer a hybrid solution. Egnyte is the only provider to enable on-premise, cloud-only and hybrid deployment models that enable businesses to access and store 100 percent of their files in the way best suited to meet their needs.

Late in 2013, Egnyte launched Storage Connect, a solution that allows enterprises to obtain cloud benefits while retaining file storage purely on-premises. In 2014, Egnyte expects to enhance Storage Connect across multiple dimensions:

• Granular Auditing & DLP Integration: Egnyte will tie in with existing DLP solutions installed on-premises, allowing customers in regulated industries to honor complex policies (i.e. regular expressions, fingerprints, machine learning) on certain data, such as credit card details, social security numbers, or health information, and all files will be scanned to ensure those details aren’t shared outside of the company. IT will also be able to audit file activity across both cloud and on-premise files in an integrated fashion.
• Unified Identity Management: In conjunction with RSA, Egnyte is also excited to expand its partnership with OneLogin to simplify identity management under a unified framework, regardless of which deployment model a customer chooses – cloud, on-premises or hybrid.

Data

Egnyte is also adding new security features and integrations at every touch point along the data life-cycle to further expand data security; these features include:

• Endpoint Encryption: This capability will provide customers with extra security if an end-user device is lost or stolen, or if an employee leaves the company. The encrypted files that are downloaded on these devices will only be accessible with a key, and that key can be revoked remotely by IT.
• Antivirus protection: To protect against malware infecting customer data in the cloud, Egnyte’s antivirus capability will scan files before they’re stored to ensure the data is malware free.

Industry

For the next 12 months, Egnyte is focused on enhancing compliance standards for several industries, with an emphasis on:

• SOC2: Egnyte will complete a certification for its internal processes, with a priority on enhanced auditing and controls when developing and building out the Egnyte platform.
• Digital Rights Management (DRM): Enhanced DRM will provide increased file controls for sensitive materials, such as intellectual property or legal forms. IT teams in regulated industries will be able to create a policy on what users can do with different file types.