The day is finally here. We are incredibly excited about last week’s launch of our new website. It’s light years ahead of where we started, and I specifically want to call out the guys from Fresh Tilled Soil who were able to work with a seemingly impossible deadline and create something we’re insanely happy with. We still have a lot of work to do to make it better, but now is a good time to catch our breath.

Our new homepage. Now with 100% more sliding-image-ness!

As a startup, we’re constantly experimenting to maximize conversions to meet our goal: get people to try our SaaS data management product. (See what I did there?)

Since we released the paid version of our product in February, we’ve been trying everything and learning a lot. There’s no panacea, no cure for everything, but the changes we make are based on what we’ve picked up from experience. People from reddit hate clever marketing language, don’t watch videos, and want you to lay out exactly what features your app offers. Visitors coming from facebook are apt to sign up for the free trial, but they’re in a hurry. If they don’t get an activation email from us immediately, they’re off doing something else.

People that are trying to find software to do an internal permissions audit have a concrete pain that has to be solved as soon as possible. They’ll visit a few pages, they’ll give a real phone number, and they will compare your product to your competitors. Contrast that with someone that is flirting with the idea of introducing a data governance policy at their company, but is just doing the research to see if it’s viable. One wants quick, clear information to solve a problem. The other wants to collect some data to find out whether the idea is feasible, not which vendor they should pick.

Both are valid leads deserving attention. You have to have a balancing act, giving them the chance to choose how much information they need.

There are a couple of reasons that led us to redesign the site.

1. Just because it looks cool doesn’t mean it works well - Though we are a little biased, we love the look and feel of our app. The background is black, and it makes all the other sections really pop out. When we tried to replicate that look and feel on our web site, it didn’t really work.  We heard many complaints about the site being hard to read, so we changed the design to address what we were hearing.

2. People didn’t know what to do next - I think that’s a problem that a lot of startups have. You spend so much time and energy designing and creating content that you fail to think from the perspective of a brand new visitor that knows nothing about you. We’ve tried to make it easy to answer one question that every visitor to every we page asks: “What do I do next?”

3. Everyone wants to know your price - I’ve heard this a million times and had the same feeling myself: “So, now you have me on your site. I’ve checked out a few pages, and I’m intrigued. Now how much does it cost? Wait…..really? You don’t list your pricing? I’m out.”

4. People want to scan, not click - Though I’m a huge fan of videos, they’re not always the most effective way to explain your product. Sometimes people don’t have speakers, other times they’re on a mobile device that doesn’t support flash video. So we put together a “feature tour” page that covers most of what we show in our videos on a single page.

5. Handle objections up front - We’re not doing this well yet, but we’re taking steps in the right direction. Our app is a software as a service application that helps IT managers handle the access and usage of unstructured data. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision, we rarely even mentioned the term “SaaS” on our old site. We’re changing that. There are some companies that simply cannot use a SaaS offering, so we don’t want to waste their time trying out Aprigo NINJA.

6. Build with SEO in mind - This is huge, and people here are sick of me talking about SEO, but constructing your site with search engines in mind is immensely important. You can build the slickest, prettiest web site in the universe, but if no one can find it, what good is it?

7. Give visitors options to contact you - Some people hate the phone. Others love it. And since you don’t know the individual personality of the person checking out your site, give them options to get in touch with you. Our options:

• Send an email
• Request a call from a sales rep
• Call us
• Use our live chat feature (hosted by Olark)
• Request a pricing quote
• Talk to us on twitter, linkedin, or facebook
• Use our support forums on GetSatisfaction

You could also send smoke signals, a passenger pigeon, a nicely written letter, or any other way you’d like to contact us. If we’re lucky enough to have people that want to contact us, they can use whatever method they prefer.

Summary

It’s only been a few days since the relaunch, and we’re already finding things to improve. The site is in no way perfect, and we’re going to continue to find ways to make it better. But we’ve learned a lot, and hope this post is helpful.

PS- I know what you’re thinking: this blog is ugly. You’re right. That’s what we’re working on now.

We’re much more than excited to announce that Aprigo NINJA For Google Docs is now live on the Google Apps Marketplace! The app went live this morning, and was covered by Gregory T. Huang from Xconomy. From his article:

Aprigo is announcing today that its “Ninja” software for managing Google Docs is widely available in the Google Apps Marketplace. The software is targeted at businesses, and it’s all part of the company’s broader efforts to make data storage and management more secure and cost-efficient, for both on-site and online applications (Google Docs would be the latter). The technology includes a data visualization interface, whereby an IT administrator can see graphically which data is exposed to whom, how important the information is, how old it is, and so forth.

Did I mention the online data management sector has been heating up? Just yesterday, we reported on Cambridge, MA-based Backupify and its recent efforts to help companies back up and manage their Google Apps data. It’s clear Google is putting an emphasis on building up its business-software ecosystem, and startups are more than happy to compete for a piece of the action.

A little bit about the app:

Aprigo NINJA for Google Docs provides advanced access management controls for Google Docs, giving organizations greater control over how documents are shared within and outside of the company.

Proactively safeguard your company’s content and control access to your Google Docs:

• Keep confidential and sensitive content protected from unauthorized viewing
• Define and enforce information-sharing policies
• Understand user adoption and utilization of Google Docs
• Rapidly address end-user inquiries and issues related to permissions

The app launch was also covered by the Official Google Enterprise Blog:

Aprigo NINJA for Google Docsprovides advanced access management controls for Google Docs, giving organizations greater visibility and control over how documents are shared within and outside of the company.

If you’d like to try it out for free, head over to our page on the Google Apps Marketplace and click to add it. Everyone gets a 7 day free trial.

Aprigo was just named a Top 25 Startup Revolutionizing Computer Forensics & Security at  Blog-O-Forensics Discussing law, forensics, and criminal justice. From the article:

Venture capitalists have become vastly interested in security-related startups that offer a range of services, from computer security, forensics and e-discovery to Web sites that offer more privacy than larger social network sites. Online identity security is a hot commodity, and the following 25 startups offer revolutionary techniques to protect and secure both individual identities and personal or business data.

Aprigo NINJA is an SaaS solution that provides a unified data dashboard for all unstructured data both on-premise and “in the cloud.” Aprigo prides itself on data breach prevention, the ability to pass compliance audits and to benchmark data. EnterpriseStorageForum.com’s Drew Robb named Aprigo a Top 10 Data Storage Startup for 2010.

We’re excited to be listed with some great companies.

In other news, our CEO, Gil Zimmermann’s video from Venture Summit East was just posted:

Over at EnterpriseStorageForum.com, Drew Robb named Aprigo a Top 10 Data Storage Startup for 2010. From the article:

Not too long ago, data storage startups were a dime a dozen, but the last few years have seen the purse strings tighten, making startups relatively scarce.

Good ideas can still get funded, however, and VCs still seem to flock to the latest hottest thing, like the cloud. And there are plenty of strong prospects out there, some of whom might exert a significant impact on the IT landscape.

Aprigo

Aprigo offers a unified data dashboard for unstructured on-premise and cloud-based data. Its Ninja product is a SaaS solution that helps companies prevent data breaches, pass compliance audits, benchmark their data environment, and save on storage costs. With 15 employees, it is currently seeking its second round of financing for its low-cost approach to data management.

Please excuse the Zoolander reference.

We talk a lot about securing access to sensitive data because, well, that’s one of the things our app can do. But when a company drones on about a problem because their product is a solution, it’s pretty easy to dismiss everything they say and see their blog posts as ads. So instead of extolling the virtues of our app, I thought I’d point to some other posts I’ve been seeing in my RSS reader recently.

Data breaches are just so hot right now.

Just this morning I spotted this blog post from Seth Misenar at  Context Security entitled “Maybe those DLP $$$/record breached stats aren’t so far off…” It seems as if Seth wasn’t convinced of the high $$ figures related to cost/records quoted in studies:

I have often scoffed at some of the numbers used to cost justify Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) purchases.  While I agree there is a pretty serious need for redoubled efforts at preventing (and moreover detecting) sensitive data leaving an organization’s control, I haven’t found myself persuaded by most of the “studies” that show crazy high $$/record costs.

But after reports of California fining five hospitals for not protecting patient data (more on that in a sec), Seth says:

Five separate facilities were fined a total of $675,000.  In total, the confidentiality of 245 medical records were breached.  Although the fines varied (sometimes based on the number of people that accessed the records), in aggregate, that puts the cost/record breached at $2,755. A far cry from the $25,000/record mark (though some instances did receive that level of penalty), but still a substantial cost.

Seth finishes the article with a very interesting point:

Would a private for-profit hospital be hesitant to report the breach of 1,000 records knowing that it could  result in $25,000,000 in fines?  I hope so, but something tells me that not every health care provider would reach the conclusion that self-reporting is in their best interest.

So, back to the California report. DarkReading.com’s Tim Wilson details five hospitals that were fined for “failing to prevent unauthorized access to confidential patient medical information.” (See the article for the breakdown)

From the article:

CDPH assessed the penalties under new California legislation intended to protect the confidentiality of medical records. Under the law, an administrative penalty of $25,000 may be assessed against a medical facility for the breach of each patient’s medical information. A penalty of up to $17,500 is added for each subsequent breach of each patient’s medical information.

After being hit with a penalty, facilities are required to submit a plan of correction to CDPH within 10 working days and implement a plan of correction to prevent future incidents. Facilities can appeal an administrative penalty by requesting a hearing within 10 calendar days of notification.

So aside from the obvious question (How can I make sure this doesn’t happen to me?), there are some really interesting questions that come up:

1. Do these fines offer a disincentive for companies to admit to data breaches?
2. How much is a piece of PI actually worth? How much should negligent companies be fined?
3. How can companies constantly monitor their data access rights to make sure everything is locked down?
4. What should smaller companies do if they can’t afford a DLP solution? It certainly seems that a small to mid-sized company’s records are worth just as much as the big corporations….at least if you assess value by the fine per record.

This is the part of the blog post where I would usually plug Aprigo NINJA. I’d then go on to talk about how it helps IT pros visualize access rights to their sensitive data. I might even go on to say that you can get a 14-day free trial to see for yourself.

But not today. I don’t want this post to be too commercial.

When IT managers come to our site to try out Aprigo NINJA, we ask them “What struck your interest? File access control or file resource management?” Most of the time the answer is “both.”

It seems that if you’re an IT manager in a mid-size company, your day-to-day is impacted by things like

• Running out of disk space
• Backups not finishing on time
• Users complaining that they can’t access data
• IT controls audits that send you digging through file system ACLs and Active Directory to generate folder permissions reporting or user entitlement reports.

Larry Walsh writes about this convergence of storage and security and adds an industry perspective on this convergence. Larry makes an interesting observation “..What much of these security-storage combinations share in common is providing security for data, but not necessarily the storage media.”

If you put yourself in the CFO’s place, security and storage ARE converged. Imagine a conversation between an IT manager and a CFO:

“Mr. CFO, we’re going to buy this $<6 figures> storage system, and oh, by the way, two things you should be aware of:

1. We won’t be able to make sure that only the right people have access to the right data on it
2. 20%-40% of that storage would be used for storing non-business related data or stale one

The CFO would then probably reply with “..there’s no way we’re buying that storage system”. But in reality, that’s exactly what the company ends up with.

The thing is, for most organizations today, they can’t answer simple questions like:

• Who has access to what?
• What is accessible to whom?
• What’s driving my storage growth?

And with explosive data growth and stagnant IT budgets, getting these answers is going to become both more important and more difficult without a way to control the security aspects of storage and the storage aspects of security. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with a certain app we’ve shamelessly plugged here (hint: it’s Aprigo NINJA).

We’re excited to announce that Aprigo was just named an AlwaysOn East Top 100 Company in the SaaS category.

From the AlwaysOn post:

“It’s with great excitement that we introduce the third annual AlwaysOn East Top 100 private companies. The AOE100 represent the top emerging companies from the East Coast that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technologies in on-demand computing, digital media, and greentech.

The AlwaysOn editorial team, along with partners at the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonnenschein, and industry experts across the globe, scoured the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private companies that are taking old notions of doing things and forging solutions that will lead to industry shake-up and huge value-creation opportunities.”

The announcement comes just a week before our CEO, Gil Zimmermann will be presenting at Venture Summit East on June 22nd at a CEO showcase hosted by Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director, THINKstrategies and with Feyzi Fatehi, CEO, Corent Technology, Inc.

Our CEO, Gil Zimmermann, sat down with Eric Linask from TMCNet.com for a video interview. Here it is:

….At least that was the perspective of an IT manager I spoke with last week, who was looking for a solution like Aprigo NINJA to better manage data access permissions.

In most organizations, the most sensitive data is under the control of the finance department which ultimately reports to the CFO. The CFO knows best who should have access to sensitive business information and as the data owners, they find themselves in many cases granting user access to data by adding a user to a folder or file’s ACL (Access control list).

Given enough time, velocity of data creation, and movement coupled with file system permission hierarchy and you end-up with thousands of files and folders with explicit user permissions, that at one point in time, made business sense.

When the CFO calls IT and asks them to remove ‘User X’’s entitlement to access sensitive data – well, it’s often impossible to determine ‘User Access’ or the list of resources that a specific user or group has access to.

Assessing and controlling what resources a user or group is permitted to access is complex and error-prone and stems from the fact that each data object  (files and folders on the file system) carries their permissions with them in the form of the ACL. Effective access rights are determined based on file system permissions and the user’s group membership in Active Directory. It is very difficult to determine what data resources the user can access when the time comes to revoke it in response to job changes, organization change or other security-related events. This problem compounds the more the environment is bigger and distributed.

With Aprigos NINJA’s ‘User Access’ functionality it’s easy to see:

• What resources are available to a specific user or group
• How access rights were granted – explicitly or via group membership

When an action needs to be taken on a large number of objects or for auditing purposes, a report can be generated that includes  all of the user’s entitlements. When a user changes roles, for example, and their Active Directory group membership changes, not cleaning up the remaining residual access creates a violation of separation of duty controls which can lead to data breaches, and not passing an audit.

So the next time the CFO calls, you won’t need to hide under your desk to avoid spending hours figuring out who has access to what. We’ve got you covered.

Aprigo NINJA’s mission is to enable organizations to control the security and costs of their unstructured data. In order to achieve this goal, Aprigo NINJA provides rich reporting options that streamline the process of analyzing the data environment.

The File Access Management reports, available both in .csv and PDF format help answer questions such as:

• Who has access to what
• What is Accessible to who
• How many folders are exposed to (e.g) the ‘Everyone’ group
• More

To access the ‘File Access Management’ (FAM) reports, in the NINJA UI, click on the icon on the top bar, and on the right-hand panel, click on ‘export’. You can use the different filters to determine the granularity and the level of reporting that is needed.

The File Resource Management reports, available both in .csv and PDF format help answer questions such as:

• What types of data exist
• What data can be archived / deleted
• How my storage is growing
• More

To access the ‘File Resource Management‘ (FRM) reports, in the NINJA UI, click on the icon on the top bar, and on the right-hand panel, click on ‘export’. You can use the different filters to determine the granularity and the level of reporting that is needed.