For only having just launched its commercial product in March, Secure64 Software Corp. is doing exceptionally well. The company has already raised $10 million in mostly angel investment.

The Greenwood Village-based firm was founded in 2002 on an enabling technology that took several years of development. The technology was based on the Itanium chip developed by Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp.

"Real people don't buy enabling technology; they buy products that solve problems," said Joe Gersch, vice president of engineering for Secure64. Gersch explained that the company took a security platform engineered around features built into the Itanium processors and created an operating system that is genuinely secure. Servers running the software are secure against all variety of attacks without the need to harden them with additional layers of security.

With 75 percent of its employees in Fort Collins, Secure64 has narrowed its focus and is ready to tackle the Domain Name Service, or DNS, server market. According to Gersch, the company is geared up to change the face of security in the market, adding that the technology could easily be leveraged in other markets, such as Web or e-mail servers.

"Web servers are a bigger market," Gersch said. He added, however, that the DNS market was the most attractive for the young company as the work needed to produce the operating system was less intensive.



Saturated market

The DNS market is not without its challenges, already saturated with several well-established operating systems. The most commonly used system is the Berkeley Internet Name Domain, or BIND. The system is free, but not without its security vulnerabilities.

"'Free' is not free," Gersch said. "'Free' has a lot of manpower costs related to it."

Today, typical DNS security practices include the use of several "bodyguard" devices, according to Gersch. Firewalls, load balancers and intrusion-detection systems are used to prevent denial-of-service attacks, malicious software and other hazards.

Each of the server protection layers is usually handled by a separate device. The cost to a business can range from $2,000 for a simple firewall to $130,000 for a complex intrusion detection system.

For having just launched its commercial product, the company is already garnering a lot of attention. An independent test by Extreme Labs Inc., released in March, helped generate a buzz in the security industry.

"The attack resistance test results we measured indicate that the Secure64 DNS software appears to be able to sustain a variety of common attack profiles while continuing to function," the report stated. "The Secure64 software was subjected to a number of attacks known to be disruptive to servers, and ignored the attacks, delivering information as requested up to the saturation point of the connections used. The results are laudable."

The industry is buzzing with Secure64's product, but Gersch wants the local community to be aware of the company as well.



Hiring top talent

"For Fort Collins, this is going to be an incredible company," Gersch said. When he joined the company three years ago, he was commuting to the Greenwood Village headquarters. But as the company focused in on its target market, the need to hire additional developers became apparent.

"I knew I had to hire engineers," he said. And he felt the most readily available talent to be had was in Fort Collins, where the firm hired former Hewlett-Packard employees and Colorado State University alumni. In fact, the company's roots are steeped in both organizations. Denny Georg, chairman of the board, is a former HP manager and a member of the CSU Industrial Advisory Board in the Department of Computer Science as well as an affiliate professor of computer science.

Bill Worley, director and chief technology officer, is a legend in his field. He retired from HP in 2002 as an HP Fellow, distinguished contributor and chief scientist. He was also the principal architect of the technology behind the Itanium processor.

Gersch, also retired from HP, received his master's degree in computer science from CSU. He feels connected to the community and hopes that success for Secure64 will translate into success for Fort Collins. He points to a potential magnet effect that could attract additional investments and companies to the area.

Gersch added that the company is likely to see most of its near-term growth in its sales and marketing departments, but will also continue to invest in its engineering efforts.

Altogether, he feels the company's ties to the Fort Collins community will remain strong.

Understanding need

Of course, the rate of growth is dependent on the market, which depends on consumer understanding of the need for security.

Consumers are coming of age in the security market. Recent media coverage of malicious attacks has made companies more aware of the effects of IT breaches. However, sometimes security needs to be packaged with something else.

For Fort Collins-based Privacy Networks, the commercial appeal of its product was less about its flagship security technology and more about its newest release - an e-mail archiving and retrieval system.

"We have a tremendous amount of customer growth right now," said CEO Steven Berens.

Like Secure64, Privacy Networks has also seen its employment numbers explode in the past few years. The company went from eight employees in 2004 to more than 20 today.

The company began selling a suite of software security features for e-mail systems in 2003. About a year ago, the company launched its latest extension of that suite, Privacy Vault. Berens said that already the archiving products account for 90 percent of the client focus. That is not to say that the security products are not being leveraged, because they are in most cases packaged with Privacy Vault.

"We're seeing a lot of businesses that see the need for (document storage) right now," he said. However, security is often an afterthought and an expected component of other products.

"Security is a pretty mature marketplace," Berens said. Businesses are not likely to switch their security system unless prompted to do so for another reason, such as acquiring a new archiving tool.