Trend Micro Expands Online Backup With Humyo

Security company Trend Micro has bought online storage and data synchronisation company Humyo, adding online backup capabilities to its portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The company claims that its Humyo acquisition will allow Trend Micro to offer consumers and small businesses customers secure backup, recovery and constant access – ridding them of the manual effort of moving files from one PC to another, which is both time-consuming and subject to potential data loss.

“Humyo’s superior data synchronisation technology – which allows multiple devices including PCs, Macs and smartphones to automatically backup to a common folder in the cloud, so that consumer users can easily access their data from whatever device they have in hand – is a clear differentiator,” said Eva Chen, chief executive of Trend Micro. “Their online storage – basically a cloud technology – fits into our strategy of providing security from and for the cloud.”

Storage space overflowing

Analyst firm IDC has estimated that the Internet storage backup market will achieve an annual growth rate of over 25 percent from 2009 to 2011. In an interview with eWEEK in April, IBM’s general manager for storage Brian Truskowski also said that the world’s data already exceeds available storage space, and many businesses are struggling with the volume and evolving nature of the data they’re collecting.

Trend Micro claims that its latest alliance will benefit Humyo customers by giving them access to additional Internet content security choices and providing peace-of-mind that their expanding digital information will be safe from malware.

“The growth in mobile devices, iPad and Internet-enabled televisions means people want access to what they want, when they want it, and on whatever device they have with them,” said Dan Conlon, co-founder and managing director of Humyo. “Online storage with synchronisation makes that happen. Google and Microsoft are behind the curve on this… we’ll push the boundaries even further to make Trend Micro online storage the global choice.”

Secure data transfer

Last week, online storage market leader, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced it was sprucing up the data transfer apparatus for its Simple Storage Service. AWS Import/Export speeds up the process of “moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS by using portable storage devices for transport,” the company said. “For large data sets, AWS Import/Export is often significantly faster than [standard] Internet transfer and more cost-effective than upgrading” a network infrastructure.

However, recent research by enterprise software provider Software AG revealed that 50 percent of British public sector organisations are unable to provide information on secure data transfer procedures and costs. This is down to the fact that they are simply failing to keep records.

“The public should be very concerned that such limited insight into the procedures and costs surrounding the transfer of sensitive information between organisations is so widespread,” said Tim Holyoake, lead technologist at Software AG. “It means that compliance with the ICO’s framework code of practice for sharing personal information must be doubtful in many organisations.”

Trend Micro has also been pushing into new areas of the security market in recent months, including outlining plans to protect and manage virtual desktop infrastructures using its hypervisor-agnostic security solution, OfficeScan 10.5, earlier in June.