In addition to giving customers a head start on their data leakage projects, Reconnex is also offering to apply the price of Profiler to the cost of its enterprise DLP package if companies decide to move forward after employing the new appliance. If they do decide to expand their initiative, a company that has put the Profiler device in place merely needs to license the additional DLP module, the company said.

At least one end-user said that the idea of such a pre-DLP technology could appeal to customers trying to decide if they can afford to, or need to use, broader data loss technologies.

Andre Gold, head of security and risk management at financial services giant ING, said that technology leaders are frequently having a tough time selling the cost of DLP to other business executives, with many others having trouble making the products they have already purchased work effectively in their own environments.

Gold said that he found DLP technologies too complex and time-consuming to consider when he first encountered the tools several years ago while working in a similar role at Continental Airlines.

As he evaluates the technologies today, having the ability to map out data process before getting involved in a far-ranging DLP initiative is something that many others in his position should find valuable, he said.

"The whole configuration aspect has been the hindrance for the adoption of DLP in most organizations," said Gold. "At companies like ING that have been built through mergers and acquisitions, we have data in a variety of different systems. It makes no sense going back and mining all that to create maps by hand; it's too hard, and it simply won't happen."

In addition to proving useful in understanding what his company might need to do with DLP, such a pre-DLP device, according to Gold, could be utilized for other tasks, including how effective its employee education programs are and how its overall risk management plans are working. "First and foremost, you can try educational programs around data handling and address education at a fraction of cost of installing DLP," he said.

Other industry watchers agreed that the Profiler device addresses one of the biggest problems related to today's DLP technologies.

"Reconnex has figured out the weakest link in data loss prevention, which is creating and tuning rules to detect and protect confidential data on the network," Larry Ponemon, chairman of research firm the Ponemon Institute, said in a statement. "With Profiler, customers can learn where their sensitive information is without any upfront knowledge of what they need to protect."