New CoSort Tool Prevents Data Privacy Breaches

Business Wire, May 14, 2007

Easy-to-Use, File Security Functions Include Field-Level Encryption

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Innovative Routines International Inc. (IRI), makers of the CoSort (www.cosort.com) data manipulation package for Unix, Linux and Windows, announced that the latest CoSort release (V9) can also encrypt and protect files with private personal information down to the field level. Other tools protect sensitive data by encrypting entire files, databases, disks, or laptops - which is often slower, and renders everything else inaccessible. Instead, CoSort can apply different protections to each field as needed: anonymization, encryption, de-identification, filtering, obfuscation, or pseudonymization - rendering data theft futile/profitless. Also unique: CoSort users can employ (and audit) these protections as they manipulate and report from many large files.

CoSort V9 integrates these security functions into its widely-used data transformation and presentation language (called SortCL). Companies and government agencies can use SortCL to protect data at risk (e.g. name, social security, credit card, or phone number) in source files that at rest or in motion. Other field-level protection methods are cumbersome, limited to one encryption library or database, or require standalone processing or expensive ETL software.

With 256-AES data encryption and other protections built into SortCL, CoSort users can simultaneously process and present data from CSV, index, LDIF, sequential, text, XML and other portable files without exposing private information. IRI Sr. Software Engineer Don Punhagen observed that, "SortCL can encrypt data quickly, and do it in the same job script and input/output (I/O) stream with large-scale sorting, joining, aggregation, conversion, and reporting tasks." In addition, SortCL scripts are explicit, easy-to-implement, and fully auditable - "a key benefit for industries with stringent compliance requirements," he added.

"Data loss and the compromising of personal information is pandemic," explains industry data expert Gwen Thomas of The Data Governance Institute. "Over the last 28 months, hundreds of documented security breaches have resulted in over 154 million records being compromised. A common theme in these breaches was that sensitive data was not encrypted - not at the file level, and not at the field level."

IRI Vice President Data Friedland summarizes IRI's field-level solution this way: "CoSort V9 can rapidly and affordably protect personally-identifying information with a rule- and role-based choice of targeted, convenient, and verifiable security functions. This includes precision encryption that lasts from database loading to overseas outsourcing."

About CoSort / IRI Inc.

Innovative Routines International (IRI) Inc., The CoSort Company, was founded in 1978. Now headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, IRI is represented in more than 30 international locations. A pioneer in open systems, IRI has grown steadily since its inception by helping IT professionals perform or accelerate: legacy sort and file migrations, high-volume data warehouse ETL and database utility operations, and, new software applications. Please visit www.cosort.com or call 800-333-SORT for more information.