An emerging new information risk management company yesterday introduced a channel partner program that it hopes will help MSSPs, security systems integrators, and other services-oriented security channel players augment and solidify their content-oriented protection solutions.
Freshly introduced to the market in late June, Houston-based Exobox bills itself as what it calls a data leak detection vendor. It’s software-as-a-service solution, ExoDetect, is designed to find and identify sensitive corporate information that’s already been leaked out into the wild. That means finding instances of data such as customer information, drafts of earnings statements before release and secret product schemas out on public websites, chat boards, social networking sites and the like.

Though at first blush Exobox may seem like it’s just trying to rename an aspect of data leak prevention, Exobox Senior Vice President Of Marketing Gary Leibowitz explains that the company’s SaaS solution is one-of-a-kind at the moment and does not compete with DLP.

“Any typical DLP vendor would probably actually look upon our solution as a great lead gen solution for them. With DLP solutions, the objective is to try to protect sensitive information from leaving the protected perimeter of the corporate network,” Leibowitz says, explaining that Exobox finds that information once it’s already left that network or been exposed publicly.

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The idea is to find information before major damage is done and to pinpoint the sources of the leaks to plug holes and prevent further exposure.

“I like to use the analogy of a plumber,” Leibowitz says. “If you suspect there's a leak in your home and you call a plumber over, the plumber doesn’t start by replacing the entire infrastructure of pipes. The plumber will try identify where the leak is, plug it, and then reevaluate as to whether or not you need to replace the pipes in the house.”

As the main channel guru for Exobox, Leibowitz says that Exobox is betting its success on his pet project, Exobox Channel Partner Program. The comprehensive partner program offers generous margins, marketing collateral, enablement programs, product training and dedicated in-house support for the channel. Leibowitz also says Exobox will also offer total transparency from a sales perspective, and has designed its in-house sales program around the channel.

“We’re very, very committed to the channel,” he says. “Sales reps within Exobox are better rewarded from a financial perspective when a deal is done through a channel partner than when it is done direct and they actually have specific quota objectives that they cannot meet without deals being done through the channel.”

Leibowitz designed the program based on his experience at BMC software, where he headed up EMEA channel development and was a part of an award-winning team that developed BMC’s global channel strategy in 2004.

He hopes that the Exobox Channel Partner Program will make it easy for security channel partners such as specialized forensics services providers, general MSSPs, system integrators and other players focused on adding value to either use data leak detection to complement their existing data protection solutions or to even embed Exobox via OEM agreements for a seamless delivery of service. These types of providers will be able to use Exobox to find leaks in the wild and then can upsell their mitigation and remediation services based on those discoveries.

Leibowitz says he believes Exobox and its partners can be a key enabler of furthering enterprise collaboration efforts without jeopardizing critical data.

“We believe that the type of collaborative technologies that are evolving are becoming so much more open and in order to do business companies have no choice but to play that game,” he says. “As a result, many more leaks will occur, which is why it is much more important to have a solution like ours to be able to plug that hole.”

Leibowitz says that Exobox expects to sign on at least two dozen new partners within the next three months. Its first publically announced partner, Columbia, Md.-based Premier Management Corporation reports that it signed on board to help lock down information for extremely risk-averse government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

"(This) positions us to address data leak detection and information security breaches more extensively,” said Marcus E. Board, chief executive officer of Premier Management Corporation, in a statement. “Our client base is high profile and the protection of our country's intelligence lies in sound data governance practices. We believe that our offering of Exobox technologies will enhance our security solutions to government and civilian businesses alike.”