Guardium Raises $5.5 Million in 3rd Financing Round; Ascent Venture Partners Leads Investment Group to Provide Funding for Guardium's Continued Rapid Growth in Database Security Market

Business Wire, August 12, 2005

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Guardium, Inc., a leader of database security and compliance solutions, today announced it has secured $5.5 million in a third round of financing. The round was led by new investor Ascent Venture Partners and includes existing investors Cedar Fund, Veritas Venture Partners and Stage One Ventures. This raises Guardium's total venture capital investment to date to $15 million.

Guardium also announced that, as part of this funding, Ascent Partner Geoff Oblak is joining its board, which also recently expanded with the addition of Amit Yoran, the Nation's former Cyber Security Chief.

Guardium will use the funding to expand its sales, marketing and customer support teams, in order to accelerate the company's growth in the rapidly expanding market for database security applications including identity theft prevention and regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, PCI and GLBA. Congress and private industry continue to drive standards for protecting critical data. The recently published Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (for identity theft prevention), for example, is a mandatory requirement for the entire Payment Card Industry. In addition, regulatory compliance continues to be a key security initiative among corporations. (According to Nemertes Research, 63% of corporations view compliance as critical and are allocating up to 60% of their security budget for meeting these regulations.)

In the last year alone, Guardium has grown its employees by 60%, quadrupled its customer base and completed more than 100 product installations of its SQL Guard solution for diverse global enterprises, ranging from the financial services and manufacturing to energy and media industries.

"We identified database security and its application for regulatory compliance and identity theft prevention initiatives as an attractive market for investment," said Geoff Oblak, Partner, Ascent Venture Partners. "Through our extensive due diligence, we determined that Guardium provides the leading solutions customers need in this high-growth market, and we are thrilled to join their investment team."

Over the past 20 years, Ascent Ventures has focused on emerging information technology sectors such as IT security and has built extensive networks and deep knowledge of these sectors.

"Ascent has a very successful track record of investing in security and software companies," said Ram Metser, CEO, Guardium, Inc. "We are gratified by Ascent's recognition of Guardium's market leadership and we look forward to utilizing their deep industry knowledge to contribute to our continued growth."

About Ascent Venture Partners

Since 1985, Ascent Venture Partners has been dedicated to partnering with seasoned management teams to build successful technology companies. Focused on the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, investments are sized from $2 to $8 million. Ascent is an active investor, offering strategic advice, leveraging its broad network and working patiently with portfolio companies to overcome challenges. Ascent has raised four venture funds totaling $400 million and has invested in over 80 companies. Ascent is currently investing out of the firm's fourth fund, a $140 million fund launched in 2004. For more information visit www.ascentvp.com.

About Guardium

Headquartered in Waltham, MA, Guardium (www.guardium.com) develops and delivers innovative database security solutions that remove complexity, and provide visibility and effective controls over database access activities of IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sybase environments. Guardium's family of non-intrusive, robust applications addresses key database security concerns that include database security assessment, access policy control and enforcement, auditing, and regulatory compliance. Guardium's growing customer base includes some of the world's most technically advanced organizations representing a wide range of industries. Financial services, telecommunications, media, manufacturing, healthcare, and government organizations trust Guardium's solutions to protect their mission critical data and handle their compliance challenges. Guardium investors include the Cedar Fund, Ascent Ventures, Veritas Venture Partners, and StageOne Ventures.

Copyright (C) 2005 Guardium. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Guardium, SQL Guard, Safeguarding Databases, SQL HealthGuard, SQL AuditGuard, SQL PolicyGuard, SQL RemoteGuard, and SQL Guard Security Suite are trademarks of Guardium, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective companies. Copying and redistribution of this material is expressly permitted by the copyright owner.