Porticor, a cloud data security company delivering a cloud-based data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud by ensuring customer keys are never exposed, on Wednesday formally launched to make available a solution combining data encryption with patented key management to protect critical data in public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

Since Porticor addresses the fundamental cloud security issue of data encryption with keys managed in the cloud, companies are now assured that their private data stored in the cloud across a variety of storage types, including virtual disks, databases, distributed storage and file systems, is fully protected.

"Many organizations have already realized the advantages of cloud infrastructure, but security hazards and regulation prevent many more from truly leveraging cloud benefits," said Gordon England, general partner at Glilot Capital, former U.S. deputy Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy. "Porticor solves a major cloud security problem and has the right team and technology to best address customers' needs. Its combination of uncompromising security with ease of implementation and full cloud operations are very important for cloud users. The highly innovative approach being fielded by Porticor will be critically important for a wide range of organizations. As such, the business prospects for Porticor are very promising."

The migration to the cloud has introduced a new set of complex security issues for IT teams to manage. Porticor's founders saw that the critical issue of keys stored in the cloud was being unaddressed and formed the company to deliver its patent-pending split-key encryption technology, built for homomorphic key encryption, to ensure the privacy of data stored in the cloud. Porticor's solution delivers the industry's highest level of data privacy in a public environment for data protection and compliance to regulations such as SOX, HIPAA, PCI DDS and GLBA, while also solving the issues raised by EU Data Protection and the U.S. Patriot Act. Using a unique, patent-pending technology, Porticor enables IaaS and PaaS cloud users to create a secured encrypted environment within minutes while completely eliminating the need to trust the security vendor or cloud provider with their encryption keys, therefore solving the biggest challenge for data encryption in the cloud -- storing the keys.

"Previous cloud data security solutions attempt to tackle only a few of the data security issues organizations face when moving to the cloud, while also introducing significant costs and overhead," said Gilad Parann-Nissany, Porticor Founder and CEO. "Porticor addresses data security in a unique way, delivering a level of trust for the security of customers' cloud data yet unseen in the industry."

Porticor was founded in Israel in 2010, with plans to expand offices to the U.S. in 2012. It is venture backed, with Glilot Capital leading its recent Series A round of funding. Its initial partners include Amazon AWS and Red Hat, Inc.

The visionary behind Porticor is Founder and CEO Gilad Parann-Nissany, a pioneer of Cloud Computing. He has built SaaS Clouds for medium and small enterprises at SAP as the Global CTO of Small Business, contributing to several SAP products and helping the company reach more than 8 million users. Recently, he created a consumer Cloud at G.ho.st -- a cloud operating system that served hundreds of thousands of users while providing browser-based and mobile access to data, people and a variety of cloud-based applications.

Also leading Porticor is Yaron Sheffer, Co-founder and CTO. A veteran computer security expert, Sheffer is co-chair of the IETF IPSECME committee, and most recently served as Technology Manager at Check Point, driving leading-edge initiatives related to that company's VPN offering. In addition, Ariel Dan, Co-Founder, serves as Porticor's Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Dan has an extensive knowledge of the IT security space, and has a proven track record of enterprise and channel sales for leading information security vendors, most recently serving in senior sales and channel positions at Websense Inc.

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