Security tools target inside jobs

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Meeting a need

While there might not be many companies using content-tracking technologies today, such offerings clearly are answering a need.

Storage network vendor McData uses Vericept's server-based software to look for pre-determined types of confidential information that should be restricted, which helps McData comply with the California data-protection laws and other regulations.

"It accurately monitors all communications across our network," says Paul Brothe, director of internal audit at McData.

Many corporations are in kicking-the-tires mode. William Boni, Motorola's chief information security officer, says his company is looking to see if any of the products would fit his global network, which supports 100,000 users and numerous business partners. "The concern is premature leakage of key forms of digital intellectual property," he says.

Start-up Intrusic focuses on the insider threat by assuming there are compromised computers on the network so none of them should be trusted.

"A typical hacker is masquerading as an insider," says Bruce Linton, CEO of Intrusic. The company's server-based Zephon software ferrets out intruders - and questionable network use by employees - by copying and analyzing business traffic at the application level to spot unusual patterns.

"I found a lot of people had created outbound reverse tunnels going to their home PCs, totally bypassing the network security architecture," says John Burke, CIO at Boston's Caritas Christi Healthcare, which operates a chain of six hospitals. "With Intrusic, you can tell when someone is sending a lot of data out to the Internet. It identified the anomalies that need to be investigated."

Burke says Intrusic's technology contributes to the effort at Caritas Christi to comply with the HIPAA rules to protect patient data and keep a good audit trail, adding, "HIPAA wouldn't exist if healthcare had taken a more stringent approach to security previously," he says.

TNT debuts

The need to tighten access to the most important corporate data and produce an audit trail related to content is also the concern of another start-up, Trusted Network Technologies (TNT). The company, fueled by $18 million in venture capital from Charles River Ventures, Flagship and JK&B, last week announced its first product, called Identity.

President and CEO Steve Gant says the "identity-based firewall" sits in front of LAN segments holding high-value servers, letting clients running I-Host software access the resources only after their credentials have been checked.

"This was developed for the inside because there's a shift to asset-centric security where the data resides," Gant says.

Payment services provider Certegy has been testing Identity to use it to guard critical financial data. "It's like a regular firewall, but it's tied to identity in a different way," says Wayne Proctor, chief information security officer at Certegy. "Hackers pride themselves on getting to the box, but with TNT they can't see the box."