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Global Security Mag: Can you present your compagny ?

Shlomo Kramer: When I founded Imperva in 2002, I was convinced that traditional infrastructure security, which focused on monitoring ports and network perimeters, was not going to keep pace with the evolution of the Internet or the increasingly sophisticated attacks from the hacker community. Indeed, the new hacker is financially motivated and targets valuable corporate assets like sensitive data and intellectual property. I saw a security gap developing in the enterprise that left applications and critical corporate data exposed, ripe for abuse by insiders with access privileges and outside hackers. With Imperva’s team, we worked on a new class of security device which would secure the data by controlling access and automatically track what users and what applications accessed sensitive data in the database. This new class of device would also protect against unauthorized or inappropriate access to such critical data.

In Europe, customers are often driven by internal requirements for data governance. In more specific terms, this means the ability to monitor, control, and protect sensitive data access and usage within their transaction systems. Additionally, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard is driving a strong focus on data protection and data privacy.

In addition, the company’s internationally recognized security and compliance research organization, the Imperva Application Defense Center (ADC), provides customers with the most up-to-date threat protection and best practices for auditing and data governance which can be automatically deployed to SecureSphere appliances.

Now, Imperva is the global leader in application data security and compliance, delivering unmatched data governance and data protection solutions.

GSMag: What is your flagship product for 2007/2008 ?

Shlomo Kramer: SecureSphere is the industry’s only complete business-critical data security and compliance solution. SecureSphere products offer proven, automated capabilities for establishing, maintaining and documenting auditing controls, security measures and regulatory compliance, providing full visibility into data usage by the end-user, through the application and into the database.

The latest version of SecureSphere spans the entire data stream to reduce the IT resources needed to protect, govern, and audit business application data. SecureSphere monitors and controls data usage within both applications and databases, and automates manual data discovery, regulation-specific reporting, and management operations including role-based delegation of tasks.

GS Mag: What is your market ‘segment?

Shlomo Kramer: Imperva aims to help mid-sized to very large enterprises address today’s application data security and compliance challenges. SecureSphere is currently installed in over 350 customers, including 10% of the Fortune 100 companies. SecureSphere adoption is very strong, with over 300% growth in customer-base over the last 2 years.
SecureSphere is deployed by leading eCommerce, retail, financial, and healthcare organizations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and Asia Pacific. Some Imperva customers include Accor, Scottrade, First Advantage, Caribou Coffee, Atos Euronext Market Solutions, Korea Life, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and FFF Enterprises

GS Mag:What are the key points of your offer?

Shlomo Kramer: Imperva’s SecureSphere is the only application and database security solution that monitors, audits, and protects confidential data and proprietary information from direct attack as well as indirect attacks through applications, web services and databases. SecureSphere is unique in its ability to address application security and compliance across the entire stack including the network, platform, application, and data layers. Imperva’s vision from day one has been to provide the most complete application data security and compliance solution on the market.
Some of the most important reason that these customer choose Imperva are

• End-to-end visibility into all data access paths, from direct access by privileged users, to indirect access via external applications, ensuring that information demanded by auditors and forensics investigators is accessible.

• Granular protection and control of corporate data assets to prevent abuse, misuse and theft by enforcing defined corporate governance processes and policies.

• Practical, automated usage modeling and policy creation that efficiently meets the complex data governance and data protection requirements of large enterprises.

• World class service from a team of experienced engineers that has been called “the best support organization I have ever dealt with” by one satisfied customer

GS Mag: What is your perception of the security market in your domain and its evolution both in France and in Europe?

Shlomo Kramer: Imperva is seeing worldwide demand and strong growth across all geographies. Approximately one third of our revenue comes from customers in our EMEA geography (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In addition to this very healthy geographic mix, we are seeing the market grow very rapidly. For example, we expect to have doubled our revenues year over year for 2007 versus 2006.

GS Mag: How do you accompany your customer?

Shlomo Kramer: We are very close to our customers and are known for the quality of our customer service. We have a dedicated professional services team for training and consulting services to help our customers with deployment.

Imperva is also committed to actively listening to its customers in order to identify emerging customer requirements and to invest in cutting edge research that identifies new capabilities in advance of customer’s requests.

GS Mag: How is organized your channel network?

Shlomo Kramer: Imperva’s partner ecosystem is integral to its continued global expansion. Ranging from strategic alliance partners to value added resellers, Imperva works closely with its global network of partners to deliver solutions. Imperva partner programs, including sales support, marketing funds and joint marketing activities, lead sharing, and sales campaigns, enable Imperva and its partners to deliver unmatched data security and compliance solutions, based on customer and market defined needs.

GS Mag: How is organized your technical support both in France and in Europe?

Shlomo Kramer: The strength of Imperva’s customer support is demonstrated by our renewals rate which is well above 90%. Imperva provides service and support through phone, e-mail, and the web. The company’s global team of sales engineers and professional service consultants provide onsite deployment, configuration, and network integration support. With Technical Support centers in 2 continents, the global support organization provides 24X7X365 support. The staff consists of experienced engineers with backgrounds in engineering, development and QA.

GS Mag:To conclude, what would be your message to your customers?

Shlomo Kramer: Imperva is committed to delivering the most effective and most widely deployed solutions for data protection and data governance. We understand that these solutions must answer to the real-world demands of practicality and efficiency. We are very proud that we’ve been able to help over 350 of the world’s premier banking, retail, telecommunications and insurance companies protect and control their critical enterprise data.