Whatever happened to last year's top 10 security companies to watch?

A lot can happen in twelve months.

Since our first top-10 security companies to watch came out last October, the companies we chose are continuing their efforts to help enterprises battle network threats by hiring new executives, expanding their head count, releasing new products, and repositioning themselves in the market.

Here’s a roundup of what last year’s winners are up to:

2007 top-10 security companies to watch

At Exploit Prevention Labs, which last year came out with desktop software product that intercepts and blocks exploit code, executives have learned what’s in a name.

“At first we called the product SocketShield, but we changed the name last November to LinkScanner, because we’re mainly geeks, and we found out that no one knew what a socket is,” says Chris Weltzien, president and COO.

The company is getting some traction with LinkScanner, available in a free version that has seen hundreds of thousands of downloads, and a paid version, which has sold to a few thousand. The enterprise market remains elusive, but the consumer market is starting to pan out in partnerships with Avanquest and IS3 for distribution and software-integration projects. Exploit Prevention Labs, which puts an emphasis on threat research, has also added four researchers.

Network Streaming also thought hard about its name, and changed it to Bomgar, after its founder Joel Bomgar. The company’s Bomgar Box, a remote-control appliance designed to enable help-desk sessions and collaboration, has been released in a SoHo version, had its security upgraded with multifactor authentication and includes a tool called Jumpoint to allow remote access to unattended PCs without requiring client software, officials say.

In February Bomgar closed a $5 million round of funding, bringing its total to $12 million.