PKWARE, Inc. is an American enterprise
data protection Data protection may refer to:
* Information privacy, also known as data privacy
* Data security
{{Authority control ...
software company that provides discovery, classification, masking and encryption software, along with data compression software. It is used by organizations in a range of industries including financial services, manufacturing, military, healthcare and government. The company's products are intended to assist other companies in complying with various data protection regulations such as
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), abbreviated GDPR, is a European Union regulation on information privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of ...
and CCPA. The company is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with additional offices in the US, UK, and India.
PKWARE was founded in 1986 by
Phil Katz
Phillip Walter Katz (November 3, 1962 – April 14, 2000) was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the ZIP file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files that ran under DOS.
...
, co-inventor of the
ZIP standard.
Thompson Street Capital Partners acquired PKWARE Inc. in 2020.
History
Compression software (1986–2000)
PKWARE was founded in 1986 by
Phil Katz
Phillip Walter Katz (November 3, 1962 – April 14, 2000) was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the ZIP file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files that ran under DOS.
...
, a software developer who had begun distributing a new file compression utility, called PKARC, as shareware. PKARC represented a radical improvement over existing compression software (including the
ARC utility, on which it was based) and gained popularity among individuals and corporations.
Following a legal settlement with Systems Enhancement Associates Inc., the owners of ARC, Katz stopped distributing PKARC. He released his own compression program, which he called
PKZIP
PKZIP is a file archiving computer program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes softwar ...
, in 1989. PKZIP was the first program to use the new
ZIP file format
ZIP is an archive file format that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is t ...
, which Katz developed in conjunction with Gary Conway and subsequently released into the public domain.
PKWARE grew in its early years through business with large corporations.
The ZIP format proved so popular that it became the de facto standard for data compression and remains in use throughout the world after more than 30 years.
Purchase and expansion (2001–2008)
After Katz died in 2000, his family sold the company to a new management team led by George Haddix and backed by investment-banking firm Grace Matthews.
[Gertzen, Jason. "Management team purchases PKWARE: Brown Deer firm leads in data compression." ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.'' March 16, 2001] Two years later, the company acquired Ascent Solutions, a large-platform software firm based in Dayton, Ohio.
SecureZIP, a program that combined PKZIP's data compression with enhanced encryption functionality, was released in 2004. In the following years, PKWARE continued to add support for large and small platform operating systems and introduced new features for both PKZIP and SecureZIP.
Shift toward data protection (2009–2015)
A new ownership group including company management, Novacap Technologies, and Maranon Capital acquired PKWARE in 2009.
The company's new CEO, V. Miller Newton, steered the company toward an increased focus on its encryption products in response to growing concerns about data security among PKWARE's customers in industries such as healthcare and government.
In 2012, PKWARE released Viivo, a cloud storage encryption product to help customers secure data stored on Dropbox and other
cloud storage service
A file-hosting service, also known as cloud-storage service, online file-storage provider, or cyberlocker, is an internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. These services allow users to upload files that can be accessed o ...
s. Viivo received attention for having been developed outside of traditional methods in an effort toward "
disruptive innovation" in the emerging cloud security market.
Developing and purchasing expanded capabilities (2016–present)
PKWARE released Smartcrypt, a data protection platform combining encryption, data discovery, and encryption
key management
Key management refers to management of Key (cryptography), cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem. This includes dealing with the generation, exchange, storage, use, crypto-shredding (destruction) and replacement of keys. It includes cryptographic ...
, in 2016. In 2018, PKWARE added Data Classification with Data Redaction to support
PCI DSS
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard used to handle credit cards from major card brands. The standard is administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, and its use ...
compliance added one year later in 2019.
PKWARE was purchased by Thompson Street Capital Partners in May 2020. After acquiring Dataguise in November 2020, the companies were merged under the single PKWARE name. Products from both legacy companies were renamed according to the new PK branding structure and the combined company received new branding to support the changes. These expanded capabilities enable PKWARE to offer data protection for structured data,
unstructured data
Unstructured data (or unstructured information) is information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information is typically plain text, text-heavy, but may contain data such ...
and
semi-structured data
Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not obey the tabular structure of data models associated with relational databases or other forms of data tables, but nonetheless contains tags or other markers to separate semantic elem ...
.
Acquisitions
On May 13, 2020,
Thompson Street Capital Partners
Thompson may refer to:
People
* Thompson (surname)
* Thompson Lantion, Filipino retired police general
* Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician
Places Australia
* Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality
Bulgaria
* Thomp ...
acquired PKWARE for an undisclosed sum.
Under Thompson Street, PKWARE acquired
Dataguise on November 10, 2020, for their sensitive information detection technologies ("data discovery").
Products
In addition to its data compression and encryption products, PKWARE continues to maintain the ZIP file format standard in the public domain. The company publishes an Application Note on the ZIP file format, providing developers with a general description and technical details of the ZIP file storage specification.
This Application Note ensures continued interoperability of the ZIP file format for all users.
Patents
Phil Katz was granted a patent in September 1991, for the search functions used in the PKZIP compression process.
In 2001 and 2005, PKWARE was awarded patents for patching technology used within PKZIP products. Also in 2005, PKWARE was granted a patent for methods used to manage .ZIP files within the Windows file manager and Outlook.
[Patent 6,879,988]
In total, PKWARE holds four patents, has over fourteen pending patents and, as of May 2020, is referenced in over two hundred patents.
[Patent Search](_blank)
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Awards
2002
* PKWARE was awarded PC Magazine's Editors' Choice for data compression software.
2016
* PKWARE Smartcrypt was awarded Security Products' GOVIES Government Security Awards for Encryption
2020
* PKWARE was awarded the gold 2020 Cybersecurity Excellence Award for Data Redaction and the bronze 2020 Award for Data Redaction
2021
* PKWARE was awarded the gold 2021 Cybersecurity Excellence Award for Database Security, the silver Award for Compliance Solution and the Silver Award for Data-Centric Security
* PKWARE was awarded the American Business Awards Gold Stevie® for Governance, Risk & Compliance Solution, and the American Business Awards Gold Stevie® for International Data Protection Solution
See also
* Phil Katz
Phillip Walter Katz (November 3, 1962 – April 14, 2000) was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the ZIP file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files that ran under DOS.
...
* PKLite
Executable compression is any means of compressing an executable file and combining the compressed data with decompression code into a single executable. When this compressed executable is executed, the decompression code recreates the original ...
External links
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:PKWARE, Inc
Companies based in Milwaukee
Companies established in 1986
Privately held companies based in Wisconsin
Software companies based in Wisconsin
1986 establishments in Wisconsin
Software companies of the United States