SecurePipe offers a suite of managed security services, including firewall, virus scanning, VPN, and a Snort-based IDS solution, all priced for small to medium sized customers.

by Jeff Goldman [July 24, 2002]

In 1996, Lawrence T. Levine was running a software company whose customers were interested in connecting to the Internet but didn't know how to handle the security issues that would follow. To help those customers protect their networks, Levine recalls, he founded the managed security service provider, SecurePipe.

Levine, now SecurePipe's Managing Director, says the company's holistic approach to security has attracted a wide customer base. "Our customers are very representative of the general business community," Levine said. "Right now, we have 17 industry sectors in our customer base—a lot of spread for a fairly young company."

SecurePipe 612 W. Main St. Suite 200 Madison, WI 53703 Voice: (877) 248-1632 E-mail: info@securepipe.com

SecurePipe's proprietary suite of managed services includes firewall, VPN, virus scanning, and intrusion detection. For all of its services, Levine explains, it just made more sense to develop their own products than to resell another company's solutions. "It's not that there's anything wrong with anyone else's products from a security standpoint, but we needed something that we could manage efficiently," he said.

The company's target customers are businesses that either have a small number of employees in one office, or a large number of employees spread out between a number of small branches. "We're dealing with businesses that are not big enough to do this themselves," Levine said. "And yet they have the need, and we've come up with a solution that helps them meet that need without hurting their pocketbook."

Even a company that has a strong IT staff, Levine adds, might not be able to provide the full-time network protection that SecurePipe offers. "One of our customer has something like 30 people on their IT staff, but they're not staffed 24 hours a day with security expertise," he said. "Using our own platforms, we've come up with very manageable processes that we've leveraged out to create an affordable solution."

Data flow management
Levine points out that intrusion detection systems, in particular, are perfect candidates for managed services—particularly for companies that lack the full-time IT staff required to manage the data that pours in. "They're hard to set up, they're hard to get right, they're hard to manage, and there's a huge amount of data that they generate even when they're set up right," he said. SecurePipe's ActiveIDS is based on Snort, with a few key adjustments. "We run a sort of hybridized Snort, with a combination of anomaly and signature based detection," Levine said. "It's based on Snort, with some other features that we've put in to give it a little more oomph."

Still, Levine is quick to add that there's nothing unique about the IDS itself—it's the engineers running it that make the difference. If an attack is detected that didn't get through, SecurePipe's engineers follow up with the attacker's upstream ISP to make sure it doesn't happen again—and if the attack is serious, the customer is contacted immediately and continually updated as the engineers resolve the issue.

There's a significant problem, Levine says, with automated intrusion prevention solutions which allow the IDS sensors to prompt the firewall automatically to block any intrusion attempts. "When you have fully automated responses on your firewall to what an IDS is picking up, you create a specific and real denial of service problem," he said.

Keep humans in the mix, though, and the risk of an unintended denial of service disappears. "We have human beings involved that are making intelligent decisions," Levine said. "And at the same time, we do have those engineers engage in some things that are semi-automated, so they can very, very quickly respond to things."

Customers can access SecurePipe's security management website at SecurityConsole.com, which gives them real time reporting on what the company's engineers are doing on their network—as well as a clear understanding of return on investments made. "In the early stages, it gives our customers a good sense that they're getting value out of what we're doing for them," Levine said.

Opting to outsource
Unless you have the resources to build and maintain your own full-time security staff, Levine suggests, outsourcing just makes sense. "It is a job—in fact, it's about 12 jobs," he said. "You've got to be doing this 24 hours a day, dealing with stuff as it happens, and doing it with people that are intelligent, that have good security backgrounds."

The pricing is straightforward: for ActiveIDS, there's a $3,000 setup fee and monthly fees start at $499. Levine says the idea is to keep it as simple as possible. "We work hard to do everything we say we can for our customers, and deliver," he said. "We don't get as much press as a lot of our competitors, and we don't court analysts like our competitors do—but we have a lot of happy customers."

One of those is Al Thompson, Chief Sales Officer for the Milwaukee-based Tushaus Computer Services. Tushaus uses SecurePipe's services itself, and also resells the security solution to its customers. "We use SecurePipe for intrusion detection in our data center rather than building our own staff of 24/7 people, which would be prohibitively expensive," Thompson said.

It's the availability of around-the-clock monitoring, Thompson explains, that sold Tushaus on SecurePipe's services. "When you look at intrusion detection and firewall, certainly you can install your own things, but you don't necessarily have the staff 24/7 to look at the changes and the people trying to penetrate your network," he said. "Having that staff that can respond, detect those issues, and protect your environment, is key."

For Thompson, the responsiveness of SecurePipe's personnel is also a key factor. "No intrusion detection system works by itself: it needs a staff," he said. "SecurePipe has got very responsive people, great technology, and most importantly, their staff is there for service. They're the security experts—and they're managing it 24/7."

— End

Online Resources:
   Intrusion Detection Systems Directory
   IDS Quick Reference Chart

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