The U.S. Department of State‘s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) today announced it will allow technical data secured using Perspecsys tokenization to be processed outside the country through the cloud without obtaining an export license under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Perspecsys said DDTC reinterpreted the ITAR to authorize the use of its tokenization to process ITAR technical data in the cloud without a license.

The new interpretation opens the cloud to companies subject to the ITAR, which controls the import and export of U.S. Munitions List (USML) articles, services and technology.

“Perspecsys has developed a way to put ITAR data in the cloud securely through tokenization, which will make life much easier for the defense industry,” Richard A. Clarke, a former senior White House advisor on cyber security, said in a prepared statement. “I welcome this creative use of technology to enable compliance.”

Perspecsys CEO David Canellos also commented on the announcement:

“We’re no strangers to regulations and compliance and have worked to help companies in regulated industries around the globe utilize the cloud without violations. We took the initiative to approach DDTC with the proposition that Perspecsys’ tokenization cloud solution would satisfy ITAR requirements. The DDTC ruling that our tokenization product will not require an ITAR license is not only validation for Perspecsys, but a complete game changer for ITAR-governed companies who were previously unable to work how they wanted – in the cloud.”

Perspecsys said its customers can tokenize data in a DDTC-approved fashion via the company’s AppProtex Cloud Control Gateway that “intercepts sensitive data while it is still on-premise and replaces it with a random tokenized value.”

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