Core Security Technologies

Cash infusion means jobs at Core

By Jay Fitzgerald, Boston Herald.

A South Boston firm is set to get a new infusion of cash to more aggressively counterattack the near-constant hacker, spyware and virus assaults against computer networks.

Core Security Technologies, with customers ranging from the U.S. Marines to NASA, is expected to announce today that it's nabbed $4.5 million from Morgan Stanley Ventures as it ramps up its sales and marketing force to sell software that deliberately launches all-out attacks on computer networks to identify their security vulnerabilities.

Paul Paget, chief executive of Core Security, said his firm's product stops short of doing actual damage to networks. It's goal: to defeat security defenses and to show how other hackers could, too.

"Rather than sit back and be attacked by the bad guys, you can easily validate your security'' with Core's software, said Paget, whose firm employs 60 people, 10 of them in the Fort Point Channel area of Southie.

Chris Meyer, a partner at the Boston consulting company Monitor Group, said computer security is becoming an attractive business in the age of intruders entering and stealing sensitive information from business networks.

"It's a big opportunity,'' said Meyer, noting he couldn't comment specifically on Core's product.

In general, computer security is getting far more sophisticated, with some engineers now developing "digital immune systems'' to protect computer systems, he said.

Core doesn't use medical terminology to describe its technology - it uses more militarylike terminology. Perhaps with reason, since many government agencies, including the Marines, have used its constantly updated product.

Jim Cupps, head of information security at Sappi Fine Paper in Portland, Maine, said his firm has been using Core's software for three years and believes its ``unique approach'' is successful in identifying weak security measures.