CIA investment arm funds Ottawa startup

Ottawa- based computer security startup Interset has attracted an undisclosed amount of investment from U. S. venture capital firm In- Q-Tel, which invests in firms and technology on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The news comes about a year after the company, which has 60 employees, announced a $ 10- million round of financing, which it planned to use to improve its computer security tech- nologies and expand operations.

The i nvestment f r om In- Q-Tel is a major boost for the Ottawa firm, which can now say it has received something akin to a seal of approval from some of the world’s leading intelligence and security organizations.

“After a rigorous evaluation and due diligence process, Interset demonstrated how anomalous behaviours can be accurately surfaced and conveyed with actionable information, allowing government security experts to focus on mitigating risks and stopping attacks that may threaten our safety,” said Dale Quayle, CEO of Interset in a statement.

“U.S. intelligence and law- its enforcement communities have long sought to protect critical data with an approach that surfaces attacks faster and more accurately, in a highly contextual, pro- active way,” he added.

Incorporated in 2001 as Grid-Iron Software, Interset has been bumping along various paths to the business it is today. It began as a product that helped businesses leverage networked computing and evolved into File-Trek Software to help manage multiple computers across a network while tracking data that might be sent to cloud computing servers.

Those earlier versions collected more than $ 16 million over t he years, but Quayle realized if he stripped away the noise, the company actually had a novel security product with which few could compete.

The company’s expertise in tracking and monitoring large amounts of complex data led to a suite of security tools that were eventually called the Interset Advanced Threat Detection Platform.

Those tools can be used to track an employee’s data use across large corporate networks and set off alarm bells if someone tries to tamper with sensitive files without authorization.

For example, an employee who regularly accesses a certain set of files every day would be flagged if they suddenly reached out for sensitive information on the network. The alarm could signal the employee is steal- ing information or that their computer has been compromised.

In the case the employee was actually authorized to access the sensitive files, an investigation by corporate IT workers could be quickly dismissed.

Interset was reportedly invited to attend an In- Q-Tel hosted “CEO Summit” in February, documents leaked online said. The event has been held annually for the past 14 years and invites companies that specialize in areas of computer and network security to showcase their products in a bid to get noticed by the U.S. government.

The event was attended by James Comey, director of the FBI, and Robert Work, deputy secretary of defence for the United States of America, among other prominent U. S. government officials.

APPROACH SURFACES ATTACKS FASTER AND MORE ACCURATELY … IN A PROACTIVE WAY.