Sourcefire

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Sourcefire
Type Public (NASDAQ: Fire)
Founded 2001
Key people John Burris (CEO); Martin Roesch (Founder and CTO, Snort Creator)
Industry Network Security; Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention System
Products Sourcefire 3D System
Employees 291 (4Q09)
Website http://www.sourcefire.com/

Sourcefire, Inc develops network security hardware and software. The Sourcefire 3D System is based on Snort, an open-source intrusion detection engine.

Contents

[edit] Background

Sourcefire was founded in 2001 by Martin Roesch, the creator of Snort. The company created a commercial version of the popular Snort software: the Sourcefire 3D System. This is an intrusion prevention solution built on Snort and designed to adapt to dynamic networks and threats in real-time. Sourcefire states that it is committed to advancing open source technology and continues to maintain close ties with the Snort user community.

Headquartered in Columbia, MD, the company has offices worldwide.

[edit] Financial

The company's initial growth was funded through four separate rounds of financing raising a total of $56.5 million from venture investors such as Sierra Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, Core Capital Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital, L.P., a venture fund whose general partner is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wasatch Advisors, Inc.

In 2005, Check Point attempted to acquire Sourcefire for $225 million,[1] but later withdrew its offer after it became clear US authorities would attempt to block the acquisition.[2]

In March 2007, Sourcefire completed an initial public offering raising $86.3 million. The sole book-running manager of the offering was Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated. Lehman Brothers Inc. acted as co-lead manager and UBS Securities LLC and Jefferies & Company, Inc. served as co-managers.

The acquisition of ClamAV by Sourcefire was made on August 17, 2007. [3]

In May 2008, Sourcefire rejected an offer of $187 million from security appliance vendor Barracuda Networks[4], who had offered to pay US$7.50 per share which amounted to a 13% premium of their then-current stock price[5].

Sourcefire (Nasdaq: FIRE) revenues for 2008 fiscal year ended December 31, 2008 grew to $75.7 million, an increase of 35% over the previous year’s $55.9 million. Gross profit for 2008 grew 36% to $58.3 million. International revenues were $18.1 million in 2008, up 30% over 2007. At the end of 2008 the company had over $100 million in cash and equivalents.[6]

[edit] Products

The Sourcefire 3D System is an intrusion prevention solution that provides a layered security defense. Each 3D System module builds on the capabilities of the previous one to increase an organization’s network protection. Sourcefire 3D Sensors scale to monitor network traffic ranging from 5Mbps to 10Gbps. In 2009 the Sourcefire Virtual 3D Sensor™ and Sourcefire Virtual Defense Center™ were introduced to provide protection for both physical and virtual assets.

Sourcefire 3D Modules include:

  • Sourcefire IPS – contains multiple default policies for blocking, draws from a library of more than 15,000 open Snort rules, and deploys in inline blocking and/or passive alerting modes.
  • Sourcefire RNA (Real-time Network Awareness) – provides continuous network intelligence and full network visibility, enabling the identification of friendly and non-friendly network behavior through passive network discovery.
  • Sourcefire RUA (Real-time User Awareness) – links user identity to security and compliance events, providing a user’s full name, department, and contact information.

The Sourcefire Defense Center (DC) is the management console used to analyze events, configure and push IPS policies, and automatically download and apply Snort rule updates.

Snort is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system utilizing a rule-driven language, which combines the benefits of signature, protocol and anomaly based inspection methods. With help from the Open Source community, Snort has developed to be the most widely deployed intrusion detection and prevention technology worldwide, becoming the de facto standard for the industry. [7]

ClamAV a/k/a Clam AntiVirus, is an open source (GPL) anti-virus toolkit for UNIX, designed especially for e-mail scanning on mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and advanced tool for automatic database updates. The core of the package is an anti-virus engine available in a form of a shared library.[8]

In 2009 Sourcefire received the 2009 SC “Reader Trust” award for best IDS/IPS solution for Snort[9], Network World’s “2009 Best of Tests” award for the Sourcefire 3D System[10], placed in the "Leaders" Quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Intrusion Detection and Prevention System Appliances[11], and ICSA Labs’ certification for the full line of Sourcefire 3D Sensors[12].

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Check Point and Sourcefire to Explore Alternative Business Relationship". 2006-03-23. http://www.checkpoint.com/press/2006/sourcefire032306.html. Retrieved 2008-10-12. 
  2. ^ "Check Point calls off Sourcefire buy". 2006-03-24. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11382. Retrieved 2008-10-13. 
  3. ^ "Sourcefire Website". http://www.sourcefire.com/company/. Retrieved 2008-10-28. 
  4. ^ "Barracuda hungry for OSS security developer Sourcefire". 2008-05-30. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/05/barracuda-hungry-for-oss-security-developer-sourcefire.ars. Retrieved 2009-08-20. 
  5. ^ "Sourcefire says no to Barracuda's takeover bid". 2008-05-30. http://www.infoworld.com/t/business/sourcefire-says-no-barracudas-takeover-bid-945. Retrieved 2009-08-20. 
  6. ^ "Sourcefire Announces 2008 Fourth Quarter & Full Year Results". 2009-02-26. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS271122+26-Feb-2009+BW20090226. Retrieved 2009-11-29. 
  7. ^ "Snort Website". http://www.snort.org. Retrieved 2008-10-28. 
  8. ^ "ClamAV Website". http://www.clamaav.org. Retrieved 2008-10-28. 
  9. ^ "SC Magazine Website". http://www.scmagazineus.com/Best-IDSIPS-solution/article/130871/. Retrieved 2009-10-29. 
  10. ^ "Network World Article". http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/022309-best-products.html?ts0hb&story=ts_bott#slide14. Retrieved 2009-10-29. 
  11. ^ "Gartner Magic Quadrant Report". http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/juniper/vol4/article4/article4.html. Retrieved 2009-10-29. 
  12. ^ "ICSA Labs Report". http://www.icsalabs.com/sites/default/files/Sourcefire_3Dfamily_NIPS_report_20090921.pdf. Retrieved 2009-10-29. 

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

Free Software portal
v • d • e
Sourcefire
Key People
John Burris, CEO  · Martin Roesch, CTO  · Tom McDonough, President/COO  · Todd Headley, CFO  · Douglas McNitt, General Council  · Tom Ashoff, VP of Engineering  · John Czupak, VP of Business Development  · John Negron, VP of Sales  · Lesley Pendergast, VP of Human Resources  · Chris Peterson, VP of Channel Sales
Board of Directors
Steven Polk, Chairman  · John Beckler, Independent  · Asheem Chandna, Independent  · Michael Cristinziano, Independent  · Tim Guleri, Independent  · John Burris, Sourcefire  · Martin Roesch, Sourcefire
Products
Open Source Products
Certifications and Training
Sourcefire Security Education Program: SFCP  · SFCE  · SnortCP  · Rule Writing Best Practices  · Fundamentals of Exploit Development
Philanthropy
Annual Revenue: ▲US$75.7 Million (FY 2008) (up 35% from 2007)  · Employees: 291 (2009) · Stock Symbol: NASDAQ: FIRE · Website: www.Sourcefire.com
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