Innovative Routines International Inc. (IRI) is releasing CoSort Version 9, an upgrade to its CoSort database package for high-volume data processing on Unix, Linux and Windows. CoSort V9 adds functionality to prevent privacy breaches by encrypting files with private, personal information (such as name, social security number, credit card number or phone number) down to the field level. While other tools protect data by encrypting entire files or databases, CoSort can apply different protections–anonymization, de-identification, pseudonymization, or filtering–to the specific field, thus rendering data theft futile. CoSort V9 integrates the security functions into SortCL, its data transformation and presentation language. With the built-in encryption and protection functions, CoSort users can process and present data in a number of file formats such as CSV, index, LDIF, text and XML without exposing private information.

With the number of data security breaches rising in 2007 and the costs to companies associated with those breaches rising too, finance executives recognize that data security is too important an area to be left solely to the discretion of the IT department. "In the past, data security has been considered an IT issue. It is absolutely a business issue," says Gwen Thomas, president of The Governance Institute, a not-for-profit organization that consults in the area of data governance. In the past, the IT people have often taken an all-or-nothing approach to encrypting data. By encrypting all the data, it makes it difficult to share the information and run reports. Field level encryption offers a solution to that approach.

The new version also features a custom dashboard option, which lets executives monitor the data in real time. The dashboard automates and unifies data across multiple departments and business lines and enables executives to monitor data shift marketing, sales or distribution tactics.