Content collaboration tools provide an easy way for employees to use and share content both inside and outside the organizations. Since these tools can be used to collaborate with customers, partners and suppliers, they often provide rich security and privacy controls. Today, much of this functionality also can be found in other tools such as cloud office platforms, workstream collaboration platforms, content services platforms and content services applications. Functional differentiators in dedicated CCTs are difficult to identify.
Information-centric security products focus on content, more than device, and apply encryption and authentication to block file access and movement from unauthorized people or circumstances. Endpoint systems are porous, mistakenly sharing data is easy, and users can be careless. Information-centric security is the last line of defense for data when firewalls, anti-malware tools, best practices and other traditional defenses fail. The scope of this market is the protection of stored information, commonly referred to as data at rest. The protection of data at rest in some ways takes precedence, because the interconnectedness of today’s systems often undermines network protections. In other words, high-value information should be protected “at rest” to prevent the risk of a breach caused by an unexpected data in motion event.