Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: High Tech Coloradobiz - Profile of PoliVec Inc. - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

POLIVEC, INC., COLORADO SPRINGS

www.polivec.com

FOUNDED: OCTOBER 1999

(as E-business Technology Inc.; renamed Polivec in January 2002)

LAUNCHED OPERATIONS: FEBRUARY 2002

INITIAL LIGHTBULB: In the early 1980s, Dr. Bruce Hartley manned a missile warning post at NORAD, but he's long since moved on to fending off totally different foes: hackers. Now a 15-year vet of IT security, Hartley -- along with co-founders Tony Locke and Ron Toman -- started PoliVec in response to what they saw as a market need for policy-driven security software.

From their previous experience working together at Trident Data Systems and DMW Worldwide for such clients as the Department of Defense, the founders "have a pretty good understanding of what the real pain points are from a security standpoint," said Hartley. "(Companies) write a security policy, they do an assessment, they make corrections, and they think they're reasonably secure. What happens invariably is something changes in their system environment. They have no idea what just changed in their security posture until they get hacked."

As an alternative to this backward-looking approach, the 35-employee PoliVec developed a suite of software that allows companies to proactively build security policies, identify weaknesses in their ever-evolving IT architecture, and ultimately keep the bad guys at bay.

IN A NUTSHELL: PoliVec is shorthand for 'Policy Vector,' meaning the company's products are designed to integrate security policies with the underlying Windows NT/2000 infrastructure. "We tie the policy and the configurations together," Hartley said. "For the first time, the management and the IT organization are really tied together from a security perspective."

The company shipped its first products, PoliVec Builder and PoliVec Scanner, late last year, and unveiled its third product, PoliVec Enforcer, in May. Backed by proprietary patent-pending technology, each is a different piece of the security puzzle. Builder guides the user through the process of developing a security policy, Scanner analyzes the system and identifies weaknesses, and Enforcer monitors the network in real time and alerts against security threats.

"We are extremely efficient," said Hartley. "I can paint the entire security configuration of a device in 300 to 400 bytes of data. One of our competitors, their agent size is 135 megabytes. Our agent is 50K ... yet we have greater functionality."

Mid-sized clients pay a one-time licensing fee...