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Cyber-Security
Guardians: Florida companies patrolling the internet
Profile of several computer security firms in Florida
 Dave Aitel |
Founded in 2002, 30-employee Immunity relocated from New York in 2005 to take advantage of Florida’s lower operating costs. It does “penetration testing,” serving as a third-party assessor of whether a company is secure. It works for government and Fortune 500 and Global 500 companies and does a lot of work in the financial sector thanks to its New York roots. “If you have any internet presence, then you’re a target,” says founder and CEO David Aitel, who joined the National Security Agency at age 18, has authored books on hacking and computer languages and hosts the DailyDave mailing list. Eweek named him one of the most 15 influential people in security, lauding him as a “hacker in his own right.”
 Helmuth Freericks |
» Commtouch, Palm Beach Gardens
Commtouch employs 14 in Florida working on anti-malware research and development and support for Google, Microsoft and other customers, says Helmuth Freericks, Commtouch’s general manager for anti-malware solutions, who founded Command Software in 1984, which was acquired by Authentium and then in 2010 by Commtouch, an Israel-based cloud-security company.
 AppRiver co-founder and CTO Joel Smith |
The company cleans viruses from e-mails routed through it. In five years, revenue has increased 430%, and the company has added more than 100 employees as it broadens services. Its strong suit is service to small- and medium-sized companies. Time is money, even for internet criminals, so they go after smaller, less well-defended companies, says co-founder and CTO Joel Smith. Tip: “One of the biggest things we tell people is don’t do financial activity on a computer kids use.”
 Kurt Long, FairWarning founder and CEO |
The coming of electronic health care records easily shared among doctors, hospitals and other caregivers has been touted for years. Less well advertised is how quickly they can be hacked into. FairWarning in Clearwater specializes in privacy-breach detection for electronic health care records and now serves 800-plus hospitals and 2,500 clinics in 42 states, Canada and Europe, including the entire National Health Service in Scotland. It grew from 20 employees last year to 50 now.
