Liquid Machines, McAfee Partner on Data-Loss Prevention

Liquid Machines Monday announced a deal to integrate McAfee's data-loss prevention technology into its enterprise rights management software. The partnership comes on the heels of last week's DLP deal between Microsoft and EMC.  

Liquid Machines has integrated McAfee's DLP Discover product, used to locate sensitive information in a network in order to apply DLP controls, into the Windows Server-based Liquid Machines Gateway for DLP. The gateway is in the proof-of-concept stage, without a definite shipping date, according to executives from Liquid Machines and McAfee.

With the two technologies linked together, the Liquid Machines Gateway for DLP will be able to locate data at rest, then apply digital-rights management (DRM) capabilities to the discovered content, such as setting read, write, print and encryption controls.

"One of the biggest challenges in digital-rights management is locating the data wherever it's stored," says Ed Gaudet, Liquid Machines' senior vice president of corporate development and marketing. "This is very hard in large organizations."

Gateway for DLP is the latest in a line of gateways that link Liquid Machines' DRM controls with other products. Earlier gateways tie DRM into wireless BlackBerry devices and Microsoft SharePoint, for example, Gaudet says.

Liquid Machines Gateway for DLP also allows customers using a second McAfee product, McAfee's DLP Prevent, to enforce policy controls through monitoring and blocking.

Liquid Machines built its DRM controls on Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services (RMS) in Windows Server. Microsoft last week said its goal is to integrate RMS and DLP through a partnership with EMC's security division RSA, which markets a DLP product.

Faizel Lakhani, vice president of DLP at McAfee, says the joint announcement with Liquid Machines has been in the works for some time and isn't meant to copycat the Microsoft/EMC announcement, but simply to show that integration of DLP and DRM is feasible and worthwhile in the enterprise.