HYDERABAD - December 2005:

After the recent incidents of the data theft in some BPO firms raising questions about the credibility of Indian call centers and BPOs the industry is working on a variety of methods to check the loss of data. While some efforts like not allowing the BPO employees to carry camera phones failed to provide desired results, the companies are now seeking the help of advanced technology to do the job. Data masking is one such method, which gaining acceptance in several BPO firms.

"Data masking could be the ultimate solution for all BPO problems in India," Sai Gundavelli, chief executive of the city based IT solutions firm Solix, told The Times of India. Solix is also actively into the security solutions market including providing data masking tools.

Solix products delivers a unique data encryption and data masking technology that helps protect corporate data from intrusion, secure it for outsourcing needs and meet the full range of regulatory standards.

Data masking works on a simple principle of masking some key portions of the data only to avoid its theft. For instance, a company needs to outsource its payroll process it will need to give the BPO firm a database instance with records of all the employees along with the employees ID, social security number etc. Due to sensitivity and privacy requirements, the instance being sent to BPO firm can be secured by encrypting or masking these records.

When the transactions are complete and sent back to the data owner, the social security number DOB can be decrypted retaining the data integrity and then integrated (updated) back into the parent database instance with ease.

"In spite of the encryption/ masking, the data integrity is still maintained and the outsourced tasks can be completed without compromising on the data security. This ensures that the sensitivity information is not visible for inappropriate use at the BPO end," Gundavelli said.

According to Merrill Lynch report, security ears are the main reason US, CIOs aren't moving IT work offshore faster. The "key inhibitor preventing companies (from using) offshore outsourcing remains data security," the report has said.

The data masking software comes in handy especially when 70% of security breaches happen internally. For instance, at the leading call center company wherein an employee memorised a credit card number and bought himself a computer, resulting in the company losing a 300 seat account.

About SolixTechnologies
Solix Technologies, Inc., a leader in enterprise data management solutions for Information Lifecycle Management, helps businesses improve application performance, reduce storage costs and meet their compliance requirements. As an ORACLE Certified Partner and SAP Complementary Software Provider (CSP), Solix is dedicated to delivering world-class software with quality at its core. With an extensive global client base, including many Fortune 500 companies, Solix is considered a pioneer in providing a complete infrastructure platform to manage data across all segments (Application, Email and Documents) in an enterprise.

For more information about Solix Technologies, visit: http://www.solix.com

Contact:
Solix Technologies, Inc.
Kalyan C. Manyam
Kalyan.manyam@solix.com

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