From: Forbes
Christopher Versace
Cyber attacks not only are growing in volume, but in the last year they have hit major companies like Google, Bank of America, Northrop Grumman, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, LinkedIn, Tumblr, the Reuters news service and the BBC to name a few. Simply put, the situation is a cause for alarm and in my experience that usually spells an opportunity for investors. That’s one of the reasons why the threat of cyber attacks sits in the crosshairs of my Safety & Security PowerTrend, one of my Great 8 PowerTrends that shapes how we invest in my PowerTrend Profits newsletter.
Earlier this week, I was talking with some folks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and they pointed out several of the key concerns that are on the minds of its more than 3 million members. For those businesses that comprise the Chamber’s constituents — from mom-and-pop shops to leading industry associations and large corporations — cyber security increasingly is on their minds.
How can it not be?
Cyber attacks not only are growing in volume, but in the last year they have hit major companies like Google, Bank of America, Northrop Grumman, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, LinkedIn, Tumblr, the Reuters news service and the BBC to name a few. Simply put, the situation is a cause for alarm and in my experience that usually spells an opportunity for investors. That’s one of the reasons why the threat of cyber attacks sits in the crosshairs of my Safety & Security PowerTrend, one of my Great 8 PowerTrends that shapes how we invest in my PowerTrend Profits newsletter.
Earlier this week, I was talking with some folks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and they pointed out several of the key concerns that are on the minds of its more than 3 million members. For those businesses that comprise the Chamber’s constituents — from mom-and-pop shops to leading industry associations and large corporations — cyber security increasingly is on their minds.
How can it not be?
Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 18, published this past April, revealed a 42% surge during 2012 in targeted attacks compared to the prior year. Designed to steal intellectual property, these targeted “cyber-espionage” attacks are increasingly hitting the manufacturing sector, as well as small businesses. While it may raise some eyebrows to those not in the know, you may be surprised to learn that 31% of all targeted attacks are aimed at businesses with fewer than 250 employees.
While the threat of cyber attacks is growing, investors are also seeing a rise in M&A activity in the space as well as new companies going public. Intel’s McAfee is buying Stonesoft, a Finnish networked firewall company. Web security provider Blue Coat Systems announced its intent to acquire Solera Networks, a specialist in big data security. In the last year, Palo Alto Networks went public and Cisco is looking to increase its exposure to the security market.
That’s the backdrop against which I recently interviewed Sourcefire CEO John Becker. Not only does John touch on the cyber security industry and the changes that are shaping it today, but he also describes a number of Sourcefire’s new products and other initiatives.
As we look at Sourcefire today, what are the biggest opportunities and challenges the company faces?
Information security across large and mid-size global organizations and government entities remains a priority due to increased cybersecurity threats. We believe that to deal with the evolving nature of security challenges, the best solutions must be agile and based on a continuous process of see, learn, adapt and act. Our Agile Security® vision drives our threat-centric approach to security, enabling defenders to be more effective before, during and after an attack; across all attack vectors; and respond at any time, all the time and in real time. Based on this vision and approach, our product offerings are unique, effective and in demand, providing us with tremendous opportunities.
The challenge is that threats continue to evolve and attackers are using nearly imperceptible indicators of compromise to accomplish their mission. We have to remain vigilant and continue to innovate so that our customers can stay ahead of threats with solutions that deliver the visibility, automation and intelligence they need to stop threats and mitigate damage once an attacker gets in.
How is Sourcefire better positioned today compared to just a few years ago?
In 2010 Sourcefire set a goal to extend its leadership and become a multi-product company in order to protect our customers from advanced threats. Today we’re seeing that play out and resonate in the market. Sourcefire’s offerings include a Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS), Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) and Advanced Malware Protection delivered via our FirePOWER™ network-based hardware platform. We extend Advanced Malware Protection beyond the network with FireAMP™ so that our solutions provide customers with contextual awareness and threat protection across the totality of today’s extended networks, including endpoints, mobile devices and virtual environments.
We are also continuing to grow our channel partners and to scale international operations to address the global demand for our solutions – not just with sales support but with engineering resources and additional infrastructure.
These are just a few of the reasons why we’ve been able to double our revenues over the past three years and better position Sourcefire for the future.
With the threat of cyber attacks continuing to grow, how does Sourcefire distinguish itself from its competitors?
It has become increasingly clear to us that vendor claims of a “silver bullet” security solution are simply wrong. Attackers are successful because they understand the nature of traditional security technologies which can only detect a threat at a single point in time. Because advanced threats are able to disguise themselves as safe, pass through defenses unnoticed, remain undetected and later exhibit malicious behavior, if defenders miss that one shot at identifying and blocking a threat they have no way of taking action retrospectively.
Sourcefire provides a new, continuous model of security that allows defenders to take a proactive stance to not only detect and block threats at the perimeter of the network, but also at each of the critical points inside and connecting to the network. With this visibility, defenders can also quickly identify and understand the scope of the damage if an attack is successful, contain the event, remediate it and bring operations back to normal.
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