Nucleus Cyber joins the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association
The phrase “Better Together” is often overused in the IT world particularly when smaller software companies are trying to fit alongside juggernauts like Microsoft in certain solution segments. However, there are times when this phrase is appropriate. Today is one of those occasions with Nucleus Cyber joining Microsoft Intelligent Security Association as announced in our press release earlier today.
On the membership in the Association Ryan McGee, director, security product marketing at Microsoft Corp, said, “We are pleased to have Nucleus Cyber join the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association in our mission to protect customers against growing external and internal threats. Secure collaboration is always top priority for our customers, and Nucleus Cyber’s integrations can help customers with highly sensitive data to ensure it remains protected as it is shared through the collaboration lifecycle.”
Joining the Association is the culmination of some terrific work by the Nucleus Cyber product team to build out capabilities in our NC Protect product to leverage key Microsoft security technologies. On this occasion our support for Microsoft’s Azure Information Protection (AIP) has enabled us to join the ranks of a select group of partners who are forging closer working relationships with Microsoft with the shared aim of protecting customers from cybersecurity threats.
One of the things that makes this especially rewarding from my perspective is that various product teams from Microsoft are directly involved in advocating for the solution integrations by the prospective members. This isn’t merely a badge of honor that was blindly bestowed on a “friendly partner” but instead is real recognition of the additional value that our solution integration brings to joint customers.
Why NC Protect and Azure Information Protection are Better Together
NC Protect takes the great foundation that AIP has built for providing data-centric protection to customers sensitive data and extends and enhances the capabilities to enable customers to apply protection to their data across every conceivable scenario that the data will be subject to during its lifecycle. We’re taking the broad data-centric capabilities and fine tuning them to be able to meet even the most granular of customer requirements. Along the way we’re also throwing in some innovative features of our own.
Our Dynamic Watermarks are a good example. We can apply a watermark at the point of time when a user accesses a file that contains the information for that scenario. For example, we can add the user’s name or email plus any file attributes, such as the name of the AIP classifying the file, as the watermark that the user sees. Moreover, we can also apply the watermark to files that can still be edited in the native O365 apps like Word or PowerPoint – while maintaining the fidelity of the watermark.
Our ability to create information rich, dynamic watermarks enables them to be used in ways that go beyond a simple stamp on a document. A recent survey on Insider Threats showed that many organizations heavily rely on educating users on their responsibilities and the procedures for handling sensitive company data. Richer, dynamic watermarks can become part of ongoing user education to alert them to the nature of the data that they are working with. Thus serving as timely reminders to take extra care with the data that they are looking at and/or working on.
Nucleus Cyber’s integration with AIP is just the first step that we as a company are taking with our plans for integrating with several Microsoft security technologies over the coming months. I’m always excited about the prospect of sharing product enhancements with customers upon release but there will be an extra incentive for myself and the rest of the Nucleus Cyber product team as each new integration will advance our partnership and work within the Association.
Sincerely,
Kurt Mueffelmann
CEO | Nucleus Cyber
