Sourcefire Inc., a Columbia cybersecurity company best known for its Snort intrusion-prevention technology, said Thursday that its net income nearly tripled in the fourth quarter of last year to $6.7 million, compared with a year earlier. Revenue was $35.3 million, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The company earned $8.9 million in profits in all of 2009, the first year since it went public in March 2007 that it wasn't in the red. One driver was a nearly twofold increase in sales to the federal government.

- Jamie Smith Hopkins