Startup PSS Systems Inc. this week unveiled its first product: software aimed at helping companies track and secure documents
that are distributed inside and outside of corporate boundaries.
PSS1 is designed to replace manual and ad hoc record management and retention procedures. The software lets companies centrally
create, manage, and enforce a range of policies for all documents, including copies on partner systems, home PCs, and removable
or backup media.
Having centrally managed rules takes the onus off individual users to know and implement policies, says Gary Kinghorn, director
of marketing at PSS. With PSS1, companies can retroactively apply policy changes to existing documents. Auditing capabilities
let users track events, such as unauthorized attempts to access a document or record policy changes.
The product sits on a central server that acts as a hub for centralized policy definition, including user and group definitions
Local servers act as a data cache for policy rules, keys, certificates and user information; these servers also support client
applications that handle individual document transactions. Access control policies are attached to individual electronic documents
-- and travel with those documents.
Companies can integrate PSS with an existing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol-compliant corporate directory or Microsoft
Active Directory to simplify managing users' privileges, Kinghorn says.
PSS competes with conventional content management vendors such as Documentum Inc. and FileNet Corp. It also will compete with
infrastructure vendors such as IBM Corp., which recently introduced bundles of hardware, software and services for helping
companies comply with regulatory requirements for data archival, retrieval and disposal.
PSS is focused initially on companies with high document sensitivity and regulatory compliance requirements, such as those
in government, financial services, insurance and life sciences industries. PSS1 costs about $40,000 for 100 users.
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