Better security and privacy for data in the cloud is the major goal behind ownCloud Enterprise Edition 6, the newly released version of the file sharing and syncing platform based on the open source project also known as ownCloud.

Announced March 11 by parent company ownCloud, ownCloud Enterprise Edition 6 is the latest edition of the value-added enterprise version of the open source ownCloud file-sharing platform, which allows organizations to build clouds on internal infrastructure.

ownCloud Enterprise Edition 6 is "the first and only sophisticated file access rules engine to enhance control and govern access to files," according to the company. It hopes that functionality will appeal to customers in highly regulated industries, such as health care and finance, where data privacy and regulatory compliance are priorities.

The file access engine works as a "file firewall," ownCloud said, allowing administrators to configure policies restricting user access to data "in a number of highly customizable scenarios, such as: end point type, mobile device type, origin IP, web client, and many more, all to give administrators a finer-grained control over who can access and update enterprise files."

The new release also introduces ownCloud integration with several other software projects and resources, including LDAP user directories, SAML-based authentication and Jive storage.  And it offers two new APIs and mobile libraries for building integrated applications.

Organizations within the channel see large potential in the new release. Jakub T. Moscicki, IT Data Storage Services at CERN, said, "We see a potential for the ownCloud platform to evolve from a system focused on handling document files into a system for handling scientific datasets on a larger scale. We are looking forward to testing new functions and improving performance in ownCloud 6."

ownCloud Enterprise Edition 6 is available now, with subscription-based pricing starting at $9,000/year for 50 users.