The concept of tying identities and data more closely together to secure environments as well as content falls under the realm of role-based access management or broader . Entitlement management products can, for instance, pull identity management data from LDAP, Active Directory or human resource directories and integrate with identity and access management tools from CA, IBM, Oracle and others to help customers build entitlement policies. Once built, the technologies monitor access across a company to determine if actions taken are in line with pre-set policies.

While CA says its primary competitors in the identity and access management market -- IBM and Oracle -- don't have such DLP capabilities, does. The company acquired in 2007 and announced plans to integrate the DLP capabilities into its own desktop, network and storage products. Vontu's technology includes the ability to crawl through data resources across the network to seek out sensitive data. That's a capability that Symantec intends to put to use to make its products more content-aware.

"We were not competing in this space, and our two main competitors don't have data-leak prevention," Hansen says.