IN THE BOARDROOM™ with...
Mr. Ian Edward Dix
Chief Marketing Officer
SafeNet (NYSE: SFNT)

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks for joining us today, Ian. You’ve had interesting experience with several multinational companies prior to joining SafeNet. Please give our audience an overview of your background and your role at SafeNet.

Ian Dix: Well, I've been a marketing person my entire career, starting at MCI way back in the
1980's, I was there for 10 years, then moved on to be Senior Vice President of Marketing at LCI, which was acquired by Qwest in 1997. I moved into the role of Senior VP of Marketing and Product Management at Qwest, then on to be Chief Marketing Officer of Cincinnati Bell, which morphed into Broadwing. Interspersed throughout those jobs I was in a couple of small companies and startups, all Internet technology related.

My role at SafeNet as CMO is a new one for the company, so I am working diligently with my group to pull together the SafeNet marketing assets from around the world into a coordinated machine that can support global initiatives yet maintain regional support and independence.

Because we're multi-dimensional - multiple divisions in the U.S, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, etc. there is one global SafeNet but there are also 9 different smaller SafeNet's, depending on what geography and what business unit you're referring to.

For example, a multinational bank in France looking for identity theft solutions doesn't care about our U.S. federal classified products and the DOD doesn't care about what our products are for Asian software companies. They want SafeNet to address their needs specifically...since we serve all of those markets - and many more - it's a cool marketing challenge for a truly 21st century company.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Many people have never heard of SafeNet and are surprised when they hear your story. Can you give us a brief backgrounder?

Ian Dix: Sure. SafeNet is a 23 year old security company founded by former engineers of the National Security Administration. We are one of the "Big 3" providers of classified encryption technology to the Department of Defense, and products are also used by over 80% of the Global 2000. We have offices in 18 countries around the globe and do production and manufacturing on 5 continents. We were named the Fastest Growing Security Technology company in the U.S. by Network World magazine in 2005.

We have 5 major lines of business:

    1. Our network encryptors for Ethernet, SONET, ATM, etc. which also include data at 
         rest disk and database encryption. That's the newly renamed, Infrastructure
         business unit.
    2. Our Borderless Security business unit is our complete suite of products for
         identity management and network access control: identity tokens, SSL remote
         access devices, and a very hot product line, Hardware Security Modules, or
         HSM's.
    3. Our Rights Management division has protection and licensing technologies for
        software and digital media companies.
    4. Our OEM business supplies much of the world's commercial network devices
        with encryption chips. They do a great business in selling
        intellectual property and toolkits, as well.
    5. And, last but not least, is our Type 1, or classified government business. This is
        our top secret encryption business for the government.

We have a saying at SafeNet. "If you protect money and government secrets, everything else is easy." That's our main bragging point: we protect more classified information for more governments in the world, and we protect more of the world's money by encrypting financial transactions, than any company in the world.

Those aren't the only two markets we serve, but the "so what" here is this: there's security and then there's security. We protect the information that - if it were compromised - then lives would be lost, trillions of dollars would be at risk, or media and software companies would have lost millions in pirated products. It's that simple.