The document-sharing website and application Dropbox has selected Addalom, an Israeli cloud computing firm, to take charge of security for its Dropbox for Business initiative, David Shamah of The Times of Israel reported today. Shamah wrote that a top security firm was necessary because Dropbox for Business users need to be “110% positive that their data” are safe.
“Dropbox for Business is all about simplifying the way people and companies work together,” said Patrick Heim, Head of Trust and Security for Dropbox. “Adallom’s integration with Dropbox for Business seamlessly delivers governance and security controls for data in the cloud without impacting the user experience people know and love.” Dropbox for Business is the enterprise component of the popular document storage site, where over 300 million users around the world upload and store documents, photos, videos, and much more. …
Cloud service companies seek top security technology to protect their clients’ data – and Israel, as a center of cyber-security technology, has emerged as an important source for multinationals seeking to protect their cloud. In fact, one of the biggest deals in Israeli tech history involved cloud security: In 2013, IBM spent nearly a billion dollars to buy Trusteer, a maker of security software to protect information from phishing and other malware attacks. Trusteer is one of the largest security firms working in the online banking space; among its customers are institutions like Bank of America, Société Générale, INGDirect, HSBC, NatWest, and The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Addolam’s advantage is that it doesn’t just protect data from people who shouldn’t have access, but also has an algorithm to detect fraudulent access by someone who has acquired the proper credentials.
As the system builds a user profile, Adallom is able to hone its understanding of how a user interacts with a company’s SaaS [Software as a service] accounts. “By learning how each user interacts with each SaaS application, we realized we could develop a behavioral model that would alert us and our customers when that user acted in a manner unlike themselves, when user activities fall outside their standard behavioral deviation,” according to the company. “This model allows us to know with high certainty when user accounts have been compromised, and stop malicious behavior immediately. It also allows us to understand heuristic information that could then be aggregated to protect all of customers.” The system can examine more than 70 variables to set the baseline for normal usage within an enterprise.
In addition to the deal with Dropbox, Adallom provides security solutions for companies and applications such as HP, SAP, FireEye, LinkedIn, Pixar, Netflix, Google Docs, Office365 and Salesforce.com
[Photo: Dropbox / YouTube ]