GTB Inspector: Data Leak Prevention

GTB Technologies makes a data leak prevention product called GTB Inspector. It's recently been revamped. Here's a summary:

• Appliance dynamically scans all protocols and ports over a network link.
• Can log/quarantine/block/redact offending material.
• Policy-based encryption.
• Also scans endpoints; e.g., for downloads to detachable USB drive.
• Main competition: Symantec/Vontu, McAfee/Reconnex.
• Does real-time content checking so can catch material on the fly.
• Pricing: $20,000 for base unit, plus user pricing (e.g., $49.94/user for 500 users, $32.25/user for 10,000 users).
• Company is privately held.

Comments:

• The DLP market is still very small, despite plenty of hype. Most vendors have very small revenues. For example, one of the more visible players, Reconnex, was doing about $4M/year when it was sold to McAfee in late 2008. Ferris Research estimates that the market for DLP solutions does not currently exceed $100M.
• GTB was missed in the recent wave of acquisitions of DLP products, in which EMC/RSA acquired Tablus, Symantec acquired Vontu, Websense acquired PortAuthority, and more recently McAfee acquired Reconnex. Vericept and GTB are some of the independents left.
• CEO Uzi Yair believes the major strengths of the product are:
  • Greater accuracy than with competing technologies. This may very well be the case; with an hour's demonstration of the product, we were unable to corroborate the assertion. If he's right, this would be an important advantage. Inaccuracy is a major problem with today's data leak prevention technology. We're tentatively skeptical about the assertion of greater accuracy; we'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
  • The ability to block material in real time. Yair says his competitors can't do this; they can only log offending material. We're surprised at this, but if his assertion about the competitors is correct, we'd agree it's an important strength.
  • The product scans all ports and protocols; Yair asserts, again to our surprise, that the competition doesn't do this. If they don't, they should.

... David Ferris