Secure Computing Corporation

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For the general concept, see computer security.
Secure Computing Corporation
McAfee
Websitewww.securecomputing.com

Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data. McAfee acquired the company in 2008.

The company also developed filtering systems used by governments such as

Saudi Arabia that blocks their citizens from accessing information on the Internet.[1][2]

Company history

In 1984, a research group called the Secure Computing Technology Center (SCTC) was formed at

Trusted Computer Systems Evaluation Criteria
(TCSEC).

Over the next several years, Secure Computing morphed from a small

defense contractor into a commercial product vendor, largely because the investment community was much less interested in purchasing security goods from defense contractors than from commercial product vendors, especially vendors in the growing Internet
space.

Secure Computing became a publicly traded company in 1995. Following the pattern of other Internet-related startups, the stock price tripled its first day: it opened at $16 a share and closed at $48. The price peaked around $64 in the next several weeks and then collapsed over the following year or so. It ranged between roughly $3 and $20 afterward until the company was purchased by McAfee.

The company headquarters were moved to

St. Paul, Minnesota
, in February 2006. Several other sites now exist, largely the result of mergers.

Mergers and acquisitions

Secure Computing consisted of several merged units, one of the oldest being Enigma Logic, Inc., which was started around 1982. Bob Bosen, the founder, claims to have created the first

SecurID
product. Enigma Logic merged with Secure Computing Corporation in 1996.

Secure Computing acquired the SmartFilter product line by purchasing Webster Network Strategies, the producer of the WebTrack product, in 1996.[3] The acquisition included the domain name webster.com, which was eventually sold to the publishers of Webster's Dictionary.

Shortly after acquiring the Webster/SmartFilter product, Secure Computing merged with Border Network Technologies, a Canadian company selling the

Borderware
firewall. Border Network Technologies boasted an excellent product and a highly developed set of sales channels; some said that the sales channels were a major inducement for the merger. Although the plan was to completely merge the Borderware product with Sidewinder, and to offer a single product to existing users of both products, this never quite succeeded. In 1998, the Borderware business unit was sold to a new company, Borderware Technologies Inc., formed by one of the original Borderware founders.

By this time, the mergers had yielded a highly distributed company with offices in Minnesota, Florida, California, and two or three in Ontario. This proved unwieldy, and the company scaled back to offices in Minnesota and California.

In 2002, the company took over the Gauntlet Firewall product from Network Associates.

In 2003, Secure Computing acquired

Bess
web filtering package. There has been some consolidation of Bess and SmartFilter, and Bess is now referred to as "Smartfilter, Bess edition" in company literature.

An acquisition of

Brisbane, Australia
.

In 2006, the company merged with Atlanta-based CipherTrust, a developer of email security solutions. The merger was announced in July 2006 and completed in August 2006.

On July 30, 2008, Secure Computing announced its intention to sell the SafeWord authentication product line to Aladdin Knowledge Systems, leaving the company with a business focused on web/mail security and firewalls. The sale was concluded later that year.

On September 22, 2008, McAfee announced its intention to acquire Secure Computing. The acquisition was completed not long afterwards, and the combined company formed the world's largest dedicated security company at the time.

Products

TrustedSource reputation system

TFIDF
) classifiers.

Web security

The company's flagship web security product line was the Secure Web appliance (formerly known as Webwasher). It provided Anti-Malware protection, TrustedSource reputation-enabled URL filtering controls, content caching, and SSL scanning capabilities.

In June 2008, Secure Computing launched Secure Web Protection Service, an in-the-cloud hosted web security service that provided a similar set of features to the Secure Web appliance, without requiring any on-premises equipment or software.

Mail security

The company's flagship email security product line was the Secure Mail appliance (formerly known as IronMail). It provided TrustedSource reputation-enabled anti-spam, data-leakage protection (DLP), encryption and anti-malware capabilities.[opinion]

Secure firewalls

The company's flagship firewall product, formerly known as Sidewinder,[4] was renamed McAfee Firewall Enterprise; McAfee sold Sidewinder to Forcepoint in January 2016.[5] Over the years, Secure Computing (and its antecedent organizations) has offered the following major lines of firewall products:

The Sidewinder firewall incorporated technical features of the high-assurance LOCK system, including

TCSEC rating, but it did earn an EAL-4+ Common Criteria
rating.

Along with Sidewinder, Gauntlet had been one of the earliest application layer firewalls; both had developed a large customer base in the United States Department of Defense. Gauntlet was originally developed by Trusted Information Systems (TIS) as a commercial version of the TIS Firewall Toolkit, an early open source firewall package developed under a DARPA contract.

Use of company products for governmental censorship

The

U.S. sanctions prohibit American companies from any dealings with Iran—and in 2005 the company said it is actively working to stop its illegal use.[2][6][7]

In response to the company,

Berkman Center for Internet and Society, stated, "[T]he fact remains that the software has been in use for an extended period of time there. And we've seen Secure Computing software turn up in more than just Iran. We've seen it in Saudi Arabia as well."[2]

In 2001 The New York Times reported that Secure Computing was one of ten companies competing for the Saudi government's contract for software to block its citizens' access to websites it deemed offensive.[8] The company already had a deal with the Saudis that was due to expire in 2003. In its defense, Secure Computing has always stated that it cannot control how customers use a product once it has been sold.[2][8] According to the OpenNet Initiative's 2007 report, the Saudi government's censorship "most extensively covers religious and social content, though sites relating to opposition groups and regional political and human rights issues are also targeted."[9]

The governments of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Sudan, and Tunisia also actively use SmartFilter. The Tunisian government goes so far as to redirect blocked pages to a fake

Error 404 page, to hide the fact that blocking software is being used.[10] The Tunisian Government is generally recognized as having a poor record when it comes to the right of free expression
.

See also

References

  1. ^
    Dallas Morning News
    , December 20, 2005; accessed September 20, 2008.
  2. ^
    BBC.com
    , June 24, 2005; accessed September 20, 2008.
  3. ^ Secure to Buy Webster Network Strategies, May 14, 1996; accessed April 22, 2014.
  4. Byte, January 1996, archived
    June 23, 2008.
  5. ^ "Acquisition of Stonesoft (McAfee Next Generation Firewall) and Sidewinder (McAfee Firewall Enterprise)" [1], January 2016
  6. ^ Iranian net censorship powered by US technology, Will Knight, New Scientist, June 27, 2005; accessed September 20, 2008.
  7. ^ Secure Computing Tries to Block Illegal Downloads in Iran, K.C. Jones, InformationWeek, October 14, 2005; accessed September 20, 2008.
  8. ^ a b Companies Compete to Provide Internet Veil for the Saudis, Jennifer 8. Lee, November 19, 2001; accessed September 20, 2008.
  9. ^ Saudi Arabia country profile, OpenNet Initiative, May 10, 2007; accessed September 20, 2008.
  10. ^ Deibert, Ronald. "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering." The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2008, p. 15.

External links

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