The US government relies on commercial industry to safeguard the Internet, telecommunications, power, water, and other critical infrastructure that underpin our national economy. Elements of this infrastructure also directly support our ability to project military power worldwide.

Industry works closely with the government to advance the ‘state of the possible’ in cyber defense. As a former CIO and military systems analyst, I have witnessed several generational cycles of defensive technology developments in the cyber arena. In the mid-90s, for example, system administrators configured firewalls (from standard computer systems) by hand, and reviewed log files (either manually or through then-clever application of scripts) to detect, characterize, assess, and potentially contain cyber intrusions. Today, automated intrusion prevention systems are available as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products, integrated with firewalls and incident management solutions to allow very rapid detection and blocking of cyber attacks. This is just one example of how industry has worked closely with the government to deliver significant advances in cyber defense technologies.

Unfortunately, our cyber adversaries today have proven relentless and highly flexible in their endless pursuit of effective attacks (for an entertaining perspective on the topic, please read Toney Jenning’s “Caddyshack & The Defense of Cyberspace: No More “Wack-a-Mole”” post on GlobalSCAPE’s blog site). Those of us in the information security industry understand that the next major terrorist strike very well may come from the cyber domain or, at a minimum, include cyber attacks as part of a broader operation. From a traditional national security perspective, it is a near certainty that future adversaries will continue to develop their cyber attack capabilities. Such asymmetric warfare capabilities are increasingly attractive, given the overwhelming superiority of US forces in conventional, force-on-force combat.

As a result, GlobalSCAPE, our partners and many others in the industry are working tirelessly to deliver next-generation cyber defense capabilities and stay one step ahead of our adversaries. Our continued development in this area is a national imperative. We are excited by the prospects for transformational solutions like application whitelisting to allow more assured defense of the cyber frontier. We’ll be addressing a variety of cyber defense topics in future posts. Stay tuned!

Some of the highlights include:

• Eighth consecutive quarter of record growth.
• 500 percent revenue growth over 2008.
• GlobalSCAPE Inc. investment of $2.3 million.
• Partnerships including those with Emerson Process Management & SignaCert.
• BOUNCER was cited as the only endpoint solution in InfoWorld’s review to successfully protect against memory exploits.
• BOUNCER provided industry-first ability to whitelist trusted ActiveX installations.
• Multiple awards, including “Best Anti-Malware Solution”, “Best Antivirus Solution” and “Best Solution for Securing SCADA/Process Control Systems”.

I am extremely proud of our progress, and I would like to thank the talented CoreTrace team, our customers, partners, and investors for a great 2009. Over the next few weeks, I am looking forward to sharing my vision for 2010, so come back often or subscribe to our RSS feed or newsletter.

In the announcement, Jim Morris, president and CEO of GlobalSCAPE, explained part of his company’s interest in CoreTrace:

“Because malware has proliferated exponentially, traditional solutions are increasingly stressed beyond their ability to keep pace with the virus of the day. The CoreTrace whitelisting technology has tremendous potential, similar to the early days of the anti-virus market.”

I am very excited about our GlobalSCAPE partnership. CoreTrace is a leader in a growing market and the GlobalSCAPE investment will allow us to continue executing in accordance with our strategic plan, while also providing both companies with a variety of interesting future opportunities.

I am looking forward to sharing those opportunities over the next few months, so stay tuned.