Sourcefire

Sourcefire, Inc was a technology company that developed network security hardware and software. The company's Firepower network security appliances were based on Snort, an open-source intrusion detection system (IDS). Sourcefire was acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion in July 2013.[1][2]

Background

Sourcefire was founded in 2001 by Martin Roesch, the creator of Snort. The company created a commercial version of the Snort software, the Sourcefire 3D System, which evolved into the company's Firepower line of network security products. The company's headquarters was in Columbia, Maryland in the United States, with offices abroad.

Financial

The company's initial growth was funded through four separate rounds of financing raising a total of $56.5 million from venture investors such as Sierra Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, Core Capital Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, and Cross Creek Capital, L.P.

Products

Firepower

The Sourcefire Firepower line of appliances are designed to form part of a layered security defense. They can be deployed as:

Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS), with network visibility into hosts, operating systems, applications, services, protocols, users, content, network behavior and network attacks and malware.
Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) with NGIPS, incorporating access and application control, threat prevention and firewall capabilities
Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System with integrated:
Application control
Malware protection
URL filtering
Advanced Malware Protection Appliance for dedicated inline network protection against advanced malware.

Advanced Malware Protection

Sourcefire Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) offers malware analysis and protection for networks and endpoints using big data analytics to discover, understand and block advanced malware outbreaks, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and targeted attacks. AMP enables malware detection and blocking while provisioning continuous analysis and retrospective alerting, using Sourcefire's cloud security intelligence.

Advanced Malware Protection can be deployed inline via a product key on NGIPS, dedicated AMP Firepower appliance or on endpoints, virtual and mobile devices with FireAMP.[16]

Snort

Snort is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system utilizing a rule-driven language, which combines signature, protocol and anomaly based inspection methods. Developed in tandem with the Snort open source community, its developers claim it is the most widely deployed intrusion detection and prevention technology worldwide.[17]

Immunet

Immunet uses the cloud virus definitions along with virus definitions from Clam AntiVirus which is an open source (GPL) anti-virus toolkit primarily used on UNIX operating systems designed for e-mail scanning on e-mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities including a multi-threaded daemon, a command-line interface scanner and tool for automatic database updates. The core of the package is an anti-virus engine available in a form of a shared library.[18] Immunet was provided in two versions, Free and Plus.[19]

As of June 10, 2014, Immunet Plus is no longer available, replaced with Immunet Free, supported by Cisco.[8]

type	Subsidiary
parent	Cisco Systems
foundation	2001
founder	Martin Roesch
location	Columbia, Maryland
key people	John Becker (CEO) (at the sale of the company), Martin Roesch (Founder and CTO)
industry	Network security; intrusion detection, intrusion prevention system and anti-malware
products	Sourcefire Firepower network security appliances
revenue	$223.1M (FY12)
num employees	560 (3Q12)
fate	Acquired
homepage	cisco.com/

Background

Financial

Products

Firepower

Advanced Malware Protection

Snort

Immunet

Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team

See also

External links

References