Guardium Announces Breakthrough Database Firewall; Innovative Policy-Based Firewall Extends SQL Guard Family and Leadership in Database Security Market

Business Wire, Dec 20, 2004

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Guardium, Inc., a leading provider of database security solutions, today announced SQL Guard(TM) Database Firewall. The breakthrough firewall extends the company's database security platform by delivering the industry's first SQL level, policy-based database firewall. Now, companies can obtain database access auditing, detection and prevention capabilities from a single platform.

"Our customers are increasingly realizing the need to enhance overall database security and look to us for effective solutions to safeguard their database infrastructure. This appreciation for a new breed of database specific security solutions is the result of both growing security concerns and compliance initiatives," said Ram Metser, CEO, Guardium. "With our new Database Firewall, Guardium can now deliver capabilities that seamlessly span from auditing and real time alerting to reliable, policy-based database access control."

Guardium's new SQL Guard Database Firewall builds upon the strength of its SQL Guard family by providing a network-based deployment model that is independent of the database. This enables many deployment advantages that include: segregation of duties, multi-vendor database support (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sybase) and ease of deployment. In addition, Guardium breaks new ground in providing key capabilities required for the successful implementation of a database firewall, including:

Policy-based Access Control

Bundled with the SQL Guard Database Firewall, Guardium's SQL PolicyGuard software application extracts granular information from the network, application, and SQL layers of the communication stream. It then aggregates and correlates this information to automatically build a baseline of all database access activity, delivering powerful real time policy-based access control and enforcement.

High Availability

SQL Guard Database Firewall incorporates all the high availability features required for an in-line deployment, including redundant power supplies, fail-open bypass, and RAID mass storage technology. For super critical applications, it can be configured in a dual redundant system with hot standby capabilities.

All-in-One Database Security Platform

The key to comprehensive database security and compliance initiatives is the ability to provide both visibility and access control for all database access activities. SQL Guard Database Firewall is the industry's only platform that can be used for security, auditing and compliance applications - all from one database security platform.

Seamless Migration

SQL Guard Database Firewall can be deployed either in a passive monitoring mode or an active in-line mode. This flexibility is important to companies, allowing them to gain instant visibility and detection to database access activities. With this confidence, and without risk, the firewall can then easily migrate from monitoring/detection to prevention.

SQL Guard model G3000 Database Firewall plays an important role in Guardium's compliance initiative, also announced today. For more information, please refer to the press release: "Guardium Launches Database Security Solutions for Sarbanes-Oxley and GLBA compliance."

Pricing and Availability

The SQL Guard Database Firewall model G3000 will be available 1Q 2005. Pricing will be announced at that time.

About Guardium

Headquartered in Waltham, MA, Guardium (www.guardium.com) develops and delivers innovative database security solutions that provide complete visibility and effective controls to safeguard enterprise data and database infrastructures. Guardium's SQL Guard is a network-based database security platform that provides unprecedented knowledge, visibility and control over the "who, what, when and how" of database access activity for IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Sybase environments. SQL Guard addresses key database security concerns that include database security assessment, access policy control and enforcement, auditing and regulatory compliance. Financial services, telecommunications, media, pharmaceutical, health care and government organizations trust Guardium's solutions to protect their mission critical data. Guardium investors include the Cedar Fund, Veritas Venture Partners, and StageOne Ventures.

Guardium, SQL Guard, SQL CAP, SQL HealthGuard, SQL AuditGuard, SQL PolicyGuard and "Safeguarding Databases" are trademarks of Guardium, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective companies.