Want flexibility? Intrusion Inc. has it in spades, from a variety of appliance options to a management interface that adapts to your needs. The company dates back to a Cisco rival founded in 1983.

by Jeff Goldman [February 6, 2002]

ODS Networks, founded back in 1983, was a successful provider of optical networking products for over fifteen years. In the late '90s, however, they made a radical change in their business plan. According to Ryon Packer, the company's Vice President of Product Management, it became clear that the market was changing, and the company decided to take extreme action.

"A tiny company called Cisco was becoming a giant that wasn't worth playing with," Packer said. "So they looked at their product lines, and one of the lines that was growing well was security products. They decided security was the game to play, and in 2000, they made the radical shift from a networking company to a network security company."

Intrusion Inc. 1101 East Arapaho Rd Richardson, Texas 75081 Voice: (888) 637-7770 E-mail: sales@intrusion.com

On June 1st, 2000, ODS Networks officially changed its name to Intrusion.com. A month later, the company acquired MimeStar, Inc. and its SecureNet Pro network intrusion detection system. Elliot Turner, MimeStar's founder, remains with Intrusion.com as its Chief Security Architect.

Last November, Intrusion.com changed its name a second time, far less radically, to Intrusion Inc. CEO Tim Kinnear explained at the time that it was simply a matter of clarification. "We develop and sell best-of-breed information security software and security appliances," he said. "By dropping the .com from our name, we'll avoid confusion by some customers and investors about our business model."

Staying flexible
The SecureNet Pro intrusion detection system includes the SecureNet Provider management console, as well as a number of sensor appliances. According to Packer, the flexibility afforded by the various appliances is the company's greatest strength. "Most companies out there offer one box that costs around $20,000," he said. "We've created a tiered system of appliances for varying levels of capability."

Intrusion Inc.'s top tier offering is the SecureNet 7145-F, a rack-mountable appliance designed for gigabit networks and priced at $24,995. "For the last year, we've been holding the position of having the fastest IDS on the market," Packer said. "The 7145 is amazingly fast."

If you don't need the fastest IDS on the market, the SecureNet 5545 rack-mountable appliance includes a 1 GHz Pentium III processor and 512 MB of RAM for $11,995. "It's a very capable box," Packer said. "You can definitely run a T3 network off of it."

The basic model is the SecureNet 2445, which comes either as a desktop appliance or a rack-mountable appliance, for $8,495. Both have no keyboard, video, mouse, or CD-ROM drives. "They're meant for a service provider to be able to deploy them in the field," Packer said. "You can put them at your customer's site hundreds of miles away, and there's nothing on the box to allow the end user to goof it up."

SecureNet Provider, Intrusion Inc.'s management console, is focused on enabling an ISP to keep track of events as efficiently as possible. "The primary goal that we had was to create a system that would reduce the total response time," Packer said. "For a service provider under a service level agreement, when the event happens is their most critical time. So we built the system to help them correlate data within a click."

Provider uses a Microsoft SQL database, allowing ISPs to work with the data however they want-and the management architecture allows for a similar degree of flexibility. "Some service providers have removed all of our signatures and put their own signatures in place," Packer said. "They're using our framework and their signature set, so it's really their product; we just give them the body and engine to run it on."

According to Packer, the fact that Intrusion Inc. is an OPSEC Partner with Check Point Software is also a strong selling point for many ISPs. The advantage lies in the fact that an ISP can host their Check Point firewall on Intrusion Inc.'s appliances-and that's really just the beginning. The company's new Intrusion Deployed Security (IDSEC) program will allow other security companies to have their software approved to run on Intrusion Inc.'s appliances.

Packer explains that it's all about minimizing cost of ownership. "As an ISP, I need to deploy all this stuff," he said. "Is it less expensive or more expensive to keep it all on different PCs and different platforms, or to put them all on a single appliance?"

An IDS for ISPs
Intrusion Inc. is focused on the service provider space, Packer says, so partnerships can take a number of different forms: once again, the keyword is flexibility. "We've got some very innovative levels of partnership," he said. "Because we're a smaller company, we are able to be much more creative with our solutions."

Matthew Kovar, Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group, agrees that Intrusion Inc.'s flexibility is a strong selling point. "The interface with their IDS system, and their ability to generate customized signatures, is far above the rest," Kovar said. "Intrusion really comes out towards the top when you're talking about the ability to customize the offering itself."

The range of product options, Kovar adds, is also a solid asset. "They really have a box for everyone," he said. "To have that portfolio available is very appealing for a managed security services firm or an ISP, because you have an infinite amount of flexibility in terms of catering the solution to a range of different customers."

Before its managed services were sold to VeriSign last December, Kovar recalls, Telenisus provided a solid example of Intrusion Inc.'s strengths. "Initially, they went to market with an NFR-based solution, but they kicked them out and went with Intrusion as their offering because of the flexibility and customization that Intrusion allowed them to do," he said.

Ultimately, Packer says, it's all about giving ISPs a chance to stand out. "We provide a very flexible system, because ISPs are trying to take a commonplace product market and make a unique offering out of it," he said. "Our job is to make it possible for them to create a unique offering out of our off the shelf product."

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