MENTIS Inc, the pioneer in data and application security software; celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with a look back at a history of innovation.

In 2004, when MENTIS was launched, data breaches were not a fact of life. It wasn’t until 2005 that the first breach of more than a million records occurred at the retailer DSW. That same year, a credit card processing company had 40 million credit card accounts hacked. And the first data breach affecting a university also occurred in 2005.

MENTIS in 2004 foresaw the risk of data loss because of the ways that data was collected, stored, and accessed or shared. MENTIS approached the problem with two key understandings: first, that enterprise data systems were more like a sieve than a secure repository; and second, that enterprise systems were much more complex, and stored data in many more unexpected and undocumented places, than administrators were aware.

MENTIS’ first innovation was to reject the patchwork, point solution approach and instead take on the challenge of creating a unified, comprehensive platform that could enable enterprises to protect data as it is collected and deployed across the enterprise. The architecture allowed for the sharing of intelligence so that modules could work together without repetition and without creating security gaps.

In its foundational modules, MENTIS advocated for masking nonproduction databases, and brought iScramble to market- the first static data masking product. Today, static data masking is considered an essential tool.

MENTIS was also one of the first company to address the complexity of data migration throughout enterprise systems by building the most comprehensive automated sensitive data discovery. MENTIS built on its early discovery and static data masking architecture by adding dynamic data masking, sensitive data-centric monitoring and retirement, and solutions to enable to its clients to comply with privacy and security laws around the world.

“Years before ‘Right to Deletion’ was included as a European regulatory requirement, MENTIS had developed iRetire TM – a product we designed to tackle the risk we found with companies retaining too much old data. iRetire not only helps in compliance by providing a way to retire defunct — but still highly sensitive — data, thus reducing risk, but also fits the EU directives on personal rights as well. This is just one example of ways in which MENTIS has always been ahead of the market needs. We have built a culture as an innovator with a visionary approach.”

Rajesh Parthasarathy, MENTIS’ founder, and CEO

Parthasarathy continued, “The MENTIS platform is a business application and not an IT solution. It is intended to work with various complex applications while giving the flexibility to choose from multiple approaches; for instance, customers can choose the right masking approach to fit the complexity of their needs.”

Parthasarathy concluded, “Our philosophy is that innovation is never unilateral, but it involves listening to your customers and helping solve their problems today, while not blocking them into an inflexible approach when the future brings new challenges.”

Paula Capps, Chief Operations Officer of MENTIS, said, “Among the security companies started in the 2000s, MENTIS is the only company with a singular focus on data security that has thrived. Data security has evolved over the years, but MENTIS has always been the first to introduce ground-breaking products to meet our customer’s data security needs. MENTIS is all about data security that works in the real world.”

Suresh Sundaram, Executive Director at MENTIS, added, “There are few journeys as remarkable as that of MENTIS, a journey made possible by application of innovation, commitment to vision, and emphasis on value and successful relationships with stakeholders. Now more than ever, MENTIS is hugely relevant to global businesses and will continue to provide leading-edge data security solutions for compliance enforcement, cross-border data access, test data management, security for sensitive data in cloud applications and data warehouses – solutions that deliver business value.”

With 56 product releases in the last 15 years, MENTIS has built an-integrated platform that not only addresses today’s risks but responds to new uses and trends. The MENTIS platform learns and adapts to meet new challenges to the security of sensitive data.

The platform supports structured databases such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, and MySQL, and unstructured data in files, mainframe databases (IMS and DB2) and Big data environments. On the applications front, MENTIS has successfully been deployed in complex applications such as Actimize, Oracle EBS, Peoplesoft; and Cloud environments such as Amazon and Azure.

MENTIS has proven itself with a global customer roster of organizations that lead in their market: from a top Swiss bank, a Fortune 15 conglomerate, and Ivy League universities to a global staffing services provider, a global credit rating company, and a Fortune 500 medical technology company, to name a few.

Analyst groups including Gartner and Bloor have recognized the MENTIS platform consistently as an innovator and challenger in data security.

About MENTIS

Founded in 2004, MENTIS was one of the first companies in what was then a fledgling data-security market. Guided by a visionary founder with a deep grounding in both business and technology, MENTIS immediately began to innovate and has never since stopped. Known for its responsiveness to the moving target that is risk and compliance, MENTIS continues to bring powerful products to the market, the result of the company’s deep analysis of new trends in risk, along with a collaboration with its customers to assess and weigh their current challenges.

The company’s latest release makes the MENTIS platform the only integrated end-to-end platform where discovery, masking, monitoring, and retirement of sensitive data are available for both Non-Production and Production environments, and also now support both structured and unstructured data, whether in the cloud or on premise. Its segregation of duties functionalities means MENTIS also allows stakeholders across the IT, business, and security and compliance groups to collaborate to achieve comprehensive and consistent data security.

MENTIS helps protects the data of some of the most iconic industries and institutions in the world. Its customer roster includes internet commerce pioneers and national airlines; higher education institutions ranging from the Ivy League to Land Grant schools; international industrial behemoths and retail giants; and global leaders in the highly regulated financial services and healthcare industries.

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