Approaching security with military tools

With Walt Disney World hacked a few weeks ago and security incidents in general skyrocketing, I went to NetWorld+Interop with security on my mind and liked what I saw in a company called LogiKeep.

LogiKeep was founded in 1997 by two former Navy officers, Derek Harp and Michael Assante, who reasoned that the flood of security information obfuscates the important stuff, making it hard for firms to identify significant threats and respond in a timely way.

Their answer is an early warning system modeled after military intelligence gathering techniques. LogiKeep has assembled a team of intelligence experts in a command post in Ohio, charging them with scanning some 7,000 sources looking for threats. Sources include everything from government agencies to vendors to hackers and the media.

When customers sign up for LogiKeep's intelligence service they get a PC application they use to identify their network resources. That profile is then used to filter the reports LogiKeep generates.

For example, a company that uses Adobe Acrobat would have been notified in July about a vulnerability involving PDF files. The LogiKeep report describes the vulnerability (good reading for top executives), identifies warning indicators and safeguards (good for security managers), and gives technical information the IT staff will need to fight back.

The top of each report has a graphic that indicates the urgency, the credibility of the information and the severity or potential damage. Users can customize the client so real threats set pagers buzzing.

The reports are also versioned, meaning LogiKeep watches threats as they mature and constantly updates their reports.

The service, which became generally available in August, costs $25,000 per application per year. Some early customers apparently are buying multiple applications and divvying up watch duty tasks. For example, one group might simply want reports involving security gear such as firewalls, while another might want to watch for Windows NT vulnerabilities.

It's an interesting approach to a huge problem that is only getting bigger. According to Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University, there were 8,836 security incidents in the first half of this year, vs. 9,859 in all of 1999.

-John Dix, Editor in chief
jdix@nww.com

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