A Columbia company that invented what it calls the world's most widely deployed technology to detect computer hackers announced yesterday that it received $7.6 million in venture capital to develop and market a commercial version of its product.
Sourcefire, a 30-employee, privately held company, uses Snort, a detection technology developed by the company's founder, Martin Roesch.
Even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, network security was a major concern, exacerbated by outbreaks of computer viruses. Microsoft Corp.'s biggest software launch last year, that of its Internet-based XP product, was undercut by accounts that it allowed intruders into computer files through the Web.
Unlike data security systems developed by a corporate team of engineers, Snort is an open system, available for free via the Internet. Its Web site continually receives feedback on patterns of abuse or peculiarities in network traffic. Tens of thousands of technicians use the system and offer input.
"Having that number of people scrutinize a code base makes it infinitely more robust than something developed by engineers in a closed community," said Wayne Jackson, who was named chief executive officer of the company this month after working for Aether Systems Inc. of Owings Mills.
"It's impossible for one group of people to close all the loopholes," Jackson said. "No organization can build completely bulletproof software."
Two venture groups - Core Capital Partners of Washington, D.C., and Sierra Ventures in California's Silicon Valley - are investing a total of $5.5 million to help build a commercial version of Snort, Sourcefire was to announce today.The company earlier received $2.05 million, led by Inflection Point Ventures, a mid-Atlantic venture firm. The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development invested $550,000 from its pool for local technology start-ups.
Representatives of the venture funds - Pascal Luck of Core Capital, Tim Guleri and Mark Fernandez of Sierra Ventures and Tim Webb of Inflection Point - will sit on Sourcefire's new board of directors, with Jackson and Roesch. The company also recently opened a sales office in California.
Roesch, who holds an electrical and computer engineering degree from Clarkson University in Upstate New York, developed Snort after doing work for the National Security Agency. He sensed a need to be able to analyze traffic on computer networks and whether certain conditions indicated a disturbance.
He developed Snort - so named because it "sniffs out" bugs and hackers - and made the underlying software code available for free online in 1998. Snort is downloaded roughly 9,000 times a week from www.Snort.org, the company said. Last year, Roesch created Sourcefire to develop a more advanced, commercial version of the product.
"Their timing is excellent in that security services are right on everybody's front page," said Tom Bodnar, director of investment financing group for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.
"Marty was online three or four hours a day chatting with the user community," Bodnar said. "Someone will say, 'Here's 50 lines of code that will make this software run faster. Marty will test it, and if it works, he might adapt it. When I met him, Marty was sitting in his living room in Eldersburg surrounded by computer boxes and selling the system out of his living room."