WALTHAM, USA: Guardium, the database security company has announced continuing customer momentum for its database security solutions safeguarding IBM database software.

With today’s news, Guardium also announced sweeping support for a broad range of IBM server platforms and database software products.

The support helps organisations mitigate risks by protecting sensitive databases across the enterprise from both internal and external threats, while reducing IT costs with centralised security policies for heterogeneous infrastructures.

It also supports data centre and server consolidation initiatives by providing continuous, real-time monitoring controls that reduce the risk of concentrating critical data on shared infrastructures.

In addition, the company announced that it recently became the first database security company to achieve IBM Information On Demand Specialty accreditation.

In the February 2009 report “Market Overview: Database Security,” Forrester estimates that over 70 percent of all threats to databases come from inside the enterprise, and that database administrators spend less than 5 percent of their time on database security.

Insider threats are difficult to detect and block because privileged users typically have unfettered access to sensitive data. In addition, according to a recent IBM report, SQL injection attacks were up 134 percent in 2008 and have replaced cross-site scripting as the predominant type of Web application vulnerability, with attacks spiking to 450,000 per day during 2008.

Guardium‘s scalable enterprise platform streamlines operations with a single unified set of security policies, for IBM DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, MySQL and Teradata, without performance impact or changes to databases or applications, the release added.

“IBM is helping companies address the challenges of managing huge volumes of data with its Information Agenda approach to quickly transform data into a strategic asset, and, in turn, make smarter business decisions," said Boris Bialek, program director for IBM Data Management.

“Guardium’s enterprise database security and real-time monitoring technology supports this approach by enabling organisations to simplify and unify their infrastructures with the safety and assurance that they’re not increasing their risk posture,” added Bialek.

“Real-time database monitoring and data-level access controls help enterprises with three of their top pain points: preventing data leaks, assuring proper data governance and reducing operational costs,” said Ron Bennatan, CTO, Guardium.

He added: “Guardium gives all IBM customers, including mainframe and iSeries customers, unprecedented visibility and control over their data access activities, without the risk and complexity of traditional log-based approaches. Working together, IBM and Guardium provide customers with proven technology leadership that helps them migrate to next-generation architectures without increasing their risk posture.”

Guardium leveraged IBM’s Innovation Centers to develop and test these platform enhancements.