< back to releases

Press releases

Vontu extends lead in data loss prevention in 2005

Award-winning software combats identity theft, protects intellectual property

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — January 23, 2006 — Vontu, Inc. today announced that it extended its leadership position in the growing market for Data Loss Prevention solutions in 2005, as measured by customer acquisition, award-winning product development, company growth and industry recognition. Vontu closed the fiscal year 2005 with record bookings up nearly 400 percent year-over-year, outperforming all of its closest competitors. The company's financial performance was based on its innovative new products, which enable companies to stop identity theft and trade secret violations by protecting consumer data and corporate intellectual property.

"2005 was a year of growth and leadership," said Joseph Ansanelli, chairman and CEO of Vontu. "We introduced market-leading, award-winning solutions to prevent the loss of both data at rest and data in motion, raised significant amounts of new capital, and were asked by Congress to help guide a national data security law. Ultimately our success and leadership comes from building a world-class team and being chosen by leading Fortune 500 companies to be their partner in data loss prevention."

Customer adoption

In 2005, Vontu won more than 90 percent of its competitive sales engagements, focusing on large enterprise customers with significant data security requirements. The company also reported a 100 percent customer renewal rate. Today, based on the proven global enterprise scale of the Vontu solution, the majority of Vontu customers are Fortune 100 companies. As of year end, Vontu customers in North America include:

  • 2 of the top 3 commercial banks
  • 2 of the top 3 credit reporting agencies
  • 4 of the top 9 insurance companies.

Vontu technology has also been implemented across many other vertical markets including high technology, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, media, healthcare and government.

New Vontu customers in 2005 included American National Insurance Company, Big Lots Stores, Inc., Equifax, Citizens Bank, Experian, MTS Allstream, Physicians Mutual, Pitney Bowes, Prudential Financial and Raymond James Financial.

"Protecting customer data and company intellectual property is a top priority for us, and Vontu has given us the greatest confidence in our ability to prevent data loss," said Gene Fredriksen, Vice President of Information Security, Raymond James Financial. "We evaluated several solutions and determined that Vontu provided the most comprehensive, scalable solution on the market to help us reduce risk, demonstrate compliance and ensure customer loyalty."

Product leadership

Vontu delivered two major product releases in 2005, each time pushing the envelope on Data Loss Prevention capabilities. With the introduction of Vontu Prevent, released in March 2005 as part of Vontu 4.0, Vontu became the only vendor to enable organizations to block data security policy violations before they occur. In September 2005, with the release of Vontu 5.0, Vontu Discover added the ability to detect exposed confidential information stored on file servers and desktops, allowing customers to protect both data at rest and data in motion. Due to the product's highly scalable architecture and ease of implementation, all Vontu customers upgraded to Vontu 5.0 before December 2005.

Vontu was awarded the Technology of the Year Award 2005 by InfoWorld for Best Insider Threat Defense application. Both Vontu 4.0 and Vontu 5.0 were ranked first in competitive reviews conducted by the InfoWorld Test Center, announced in June 2005 and January 2006, respectively.

With Vontu Monitor, Vontu set the standard for detection accuracy through its patent-pending Exact Data Matching and its Indexed Document Matching technologies, enabling organizations to detect confidential data with unprecedented accuracy wherever it is stored and whenever it is transmitted. With Vontu Enforce, Vontu was also the first vendor to offer centralized automation of data loss prevention enforcement, including policy authoring, incident response workflow and business-unit reporting.

Vontu has consistently proven its ability to scale well beyond the limits of competing products.

At one Vontu customer, Vontu monitors more than 200,000 users. In total, Vontu customers monitor more than 1,000,000 users.

Market growth

The growing market for Data Loss Prevention software is driven by identity theft, data security legislation and an increasing awareness of the insider threat to confidential data. According to IDC, the market for detection and prevention of outbound content that violates corporate policies and government regulations will swell to $1.9 billion by 2009.

Today regulations in 22 states require businesses to notify customers if their personal data has been lost, stolen or compromised. Between February and December 2005, there were more than 100 data breach announcements resulting in notification of more than 50 million customers. According to a national survey by the Ponemon Institute, affected individuals are likely to terminate their relationship with the company, and costs to the company of recovering from a data breach average $14 million.

According to a recent Gartner report by Avivah Litan and John Pescatore, "Protecting customer data is much less expensive than dealing with a security breach in which records are exposed and potentially misused."[i]

Public recognition

Vontu achieved recognition for thought leadership, product innovation and data security best practices from both public officials and private industry. The U.S. Congress called on Vontu CEO Joseph Ansanelli to testify before legislative hearings on identity theft in March 2005. It was his third appearance before the House of Representatives.

Vontu also received top honors for company strategy and product excellence from the following industry experts:

  • In May 2005, Vontu was named by Red Herring as one of the Top 100 Private Companies in North America
  • In June 2005, Vontu was recognized as the "Best New Product" in 2005 by the 3rd Annual American Business Awards
  • In January 2006, Vontu received IDG's Infoworld Technology of the Year Award for Best Insider Threat Defense
  • The SC Magazine Awards, to be announced February 14, 2006, have named Vontu as a finalist in the following categories: Best Email Content Filtering, Best Intellectual Property Protection, Best Policy Management, Best Enterprise Security Solution and Best Security Solution for Financial Services.

Company growth

To support its rapid growth, Vontu doubled its workforce in 2005, and raised an additional $10 million in venture capital from investors including Benchmark Capital, Venrock Associates, U.S. Venture Partners and Performance Equity Management, LLC. The company also expanded its Board of Directors with the addition of security veteran and former Global Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Bank of America Rhonda MacLean.

About Vontu

Vontu is the leading provider of Data Loss Prevention solutions for both data at rest and data in motion. Vontu allows organizations to discover and protect exposed confidential information, monitor all network traffic, block select email, FTP and web communications, and automatically enforce data loss prevention policies. By reducing the frequency and severity of both inadvertent and malicious data loss incidents, Vontu helps organizations ensure public confidence, reduce compliance risk and protect competitive advantage. Vontu customers include Fortune 500 companies in financial services, insurance, high technology, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, media, and healthcare, as well as local and state government agencies. Vontu was awarded IDG’s InfoWorld 2006 Technology of the Year Award for Best Insider Threat Defense application. For more information, please visit www.vontu.com.

[i]Gartner, Inc. "Management Update: Data Protection Is Less Costly Than Data Breaches" by J. Pescatore and A. Litan. September 28, 2005.