Guardium – Real-Time Database Protection and Compliance

Guardium Closes Strategic Investment Round, Adds Cisco as Investor

Cisco Invests in Guardium’s Network-Based Platform for Protecting Sensitive Corporate Information

WALTHAM, Mass. (May 15, 2006) – Guardium, the database security company, today announced a strategic investment by Cisco Systems Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.

Guardium’s network-based technology protects sensitive information stored in critical systems such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel and custom enterprise applications. In addition, the Guardium solution enhances operational efficiency by providing a unified set of policy-based controls for heterogeneous, multi-vendor database infrastructures.

Cisco’s investment will allow Guardium to grow its leadership position in real-time database security and auditing. Guardium’s customer base currently includes major organizations in financial services, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, media, retail and government.

“We are pleased about this relationship between Cisco and Guardium,” said Charles Kim, Information Security Officer, ING Investment Management. “Both companies provide important components of our critical data infrastructure. Guardium’s innovative network-based technology monitors, protects and audits access to key information assets at ING Investment Management.”

The Guardium solution supports a vision of adaptive, network-based security with application-layer intelligence for preventing unauthorized or malicious access to the corporate data center. This high-performance network continuously responds to security events as they take place, rather than later, when an organization may have already suffered damage. With the growth of Web-based applications and service-oriented architectures (SOA), it is now even more important to find new ways to protect confidential corporate information from both insiders and outsiders.

“Database activity monitoring and auditing is one of the most promising new categories of data security,” wrote Rich Mogull, Gartner research vice president, in Best Practices and Compliance with Data Security (October 2005). “These standalone appliances enforce separation of duties by segregating audit from administrative functions, and they allow alerting based on specific database activity. For example, if a database administrator runs a select query on the credit card field, or creates a new database user, a security administrator is notified. Thresholds for sensitive data can be set to detect if someone that normally accesses particular data starts accessing an unusual volume of that data.”

“We are pleased to be supported by a global leader in networking technology,” said Ram Metser, Guardium CEO. “This will allow us to significantly broaden our reach. We can now help even more enterprises safeguard their critical information, and save time and money while implementing key compliance and IT governance initiatives.”

Cisco’s investment occurred as part of a Series C strategic round totaling $6.3 million, which was led by Cedar Fund and Ascent Venture Partners, with additional participation from all existing equity investors including Stage One Ventures and Veritas Venture Partners. The latest round brings the total equity investment in the company to $21 million. The new funds will support rapid sales growth and accelerated product development initiatives.

“Guardium’s solution addresses a key data security problem for corporations in a unique and robust way,” said Nimrod Schwartz, Cedar Fund partner. “The company’s success in winning big deals with major customers has not gone unnoticed, and we are delighted to welcome Cisco as a new and strategic investor in the company.”

Geoff Oblak, Partner, Ascent Ventures, added, “Guardium developed the world’s first solution for both database security and compliance monitoring, and has continuously enhanced its offering based on real-world feedback from top IT organizations worldwide. We are pleased by the company’s record of customer success and growth.”

About Guardium
Guardium, the database security company, develops the most widely-used network solution for database security and auditing. By securing sensitive corporate information such as financial/ERP and personal identity data in real-time — and automating change controls and compliance reporting — Guardium protects the world’s best-known brands while reducing the cost of IT governance and compliance.

Customers include: a top five U.S. bank; a top ten European financial services institution; a global consumer products manufacturer with over 100,000 employees; one of the largest North American oil and gas companies; and other companies worldwide in financial services, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and government.

Named “Hot Pick” by Information Security magazine, Guardium’s family of network appliances continuously monitor and prevent unauthorized access to databases. Guardium’s patent-pending technology performs deep packet inspection on all network traffic and detailed SQL linguistic analysis to detect or block specific commands based on policies. Unlike traditional log-based or DBMS-resident approaches, Guardium’s technology provides fine-grained database activity monitoring without impacting the performance or stability of key production applications, while supporting the separation of duties required by auditors.

The Guardium software suite includes specialized modules for SOX, PCI, Basel II and data privacy laws. A centralized multi-tier architecture provides scalability for large and distributed enterprises.

Guardium’s partners include IBM, EMC, HP, Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase, and the company is a member of IBM’s prestigious Data Governance Council. For more information, please visit http://www.guardium.com or call 781.487.9400.

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Copyright © 2006 Guardium. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Guardium, SQL Guard, and Safeguarding Databases 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.

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