[ISN] In-Q-Tel Invests In Cybersecurity Company

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221900133

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
November 18, 2009

The independent venture arm of the U.S. intelligence community, 
In-Q-Tel, has invested in cybersecurity company FireEye, the company 
announced Wednesday.

In-Q-Tel and FireEye didn't disclose terms of the agreement, or which 
intelligence agencies are particularly interested in the technology. 
However, in a release, they said that the investment "will extend 
FireEye's cyber security product development and stealth malware 
technical capabilities to protect against cyber threats."

The intelligence community has a clear interest in cybersecurity 
investment. At a conference earlier this month, deputy secretary of 
defense William Lynn said that more than 100 foreign intelligence 
agencies are actively trying to hack into federal government systems. 
The NSA recently announced plans to build a $1.5 billion cybersecurity 
data center in Utah.

California-based FireEye sells an out-of-band security appliance that 
monitors all inbound network traffic, employing a blend of signatures 
and heuristics to analyze traffic for evidence of suspicious behavior. 
After identifying suspicious traffic, the appliance captures and replays 
the traffic on virtual machines running in the appliance, which imitate 
real PCs. If those PCs are compromised, FireEye alerts administrators. 
By routing the traffic to a virtual machine, FireEye claims it is able 
to mitigate false positives. The virtual machines are invisible to the 
customer's production network.

[...]


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