Trend Spotting
Tribridge Inc. in Tampa, founded Integration Specialists Inc., an IT security firm that was acquired by Tribridge. Prior to that, he was CIO of Sykes Enterprises Inc. and ABR Information Services Inc. He’s on the board of the Tampa chapters of Infragard (a private sector partnership with the FBI ) and ISSA, or Information Systems Security Association.
Swenson sees a scary trend: hackers attacking the desktop. “Organizations have become better over the years at protecting the exterior of their networks,” he says. “So, hackers are trying to attack the end user. They attack Web servers and use these servers to deliver malicious software to take over that user’s machine.”
Some very high-profile Web sites – including those of the U.K. government, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Aeroflot Russian Airlines, Bank of India, even the Super Bowl – have fallen victim to the ploy. “The purpose of the attack wasn’t to get into the organization, but to use those organizations’ Web sites to affect everyone who visits them,” Swenson says. “The toolkits they use inject malicious code into the visitor’s PC and now the bad guys have control of that PC. Some are very sophisticated, stealing bank and brokerage account information. They have a program to mimic keystrokes of users for wire transfer and automatically start doing wire transfers out of these accounts.”
In a hacker’s world, it’s big business. “These are highly organized, highly professional people who receive an income in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each month,” says Swenson. “It can be lucrative in countries where it isn’t against the law, or there are no extradition treaties, or there’s a lower risk to get caught.”
Swenson’s company (www.tribridge.com) fights the hackers on many fronts. “We test external networks and the organization’s Web site to close up holes,” he says. “We look at desktops and laptops to identify vulnerabilities.
Putting the D in R&D
Here’s the challenge. A chemical company wants to develop phosphates as fuel cells but doesn’t quite have the technology. At a university elsewhere in the world a professor has written a paper on how to do this. How does the company find and tap the professor’s expertise?
That’s a solution from Tampa’s UTEK Corp. (www.utekcorp.com) with the launch of the TekScout™ Open Innovation Network. It pro-vides a Web site (www.tekscout.com) for companies to post their R&D challenges, which are then viewed by experts who can help solve the problems.
“UTEK’s core business is sourcing technology and working with patent groups,” says Edward Weisberg, VP and general manager of TekScout. “It’s the ‘R’ end of the R&D cycle. TekScout rounds up the back end of that ‘D’ piece.” UTEK’s pool of experts will see the need posted on TekScout for a specific type of technology. They then will scour their research sources to see if such a technology already exists or can be readily developed. “If the chemistry is right,” says Weisberg, UTEK will match up the parties. “This gets products to market quicker.”
Founded in 1996, UTEK, with current revenues of $20.3 million, also has offices in Phoenixville, PA; York, UK; Lisbon, Portugal; and Israel. The 68-employee firm’s 12 years of university relationships brings value to the TekScout network, says Weisberg. UTEK is building its pool of experts by affiliating with professional organizations, such as the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. “We now have access to their 60,000 or so members,” he says. “We’ve just made an agreement to list TekScout challenges on the Web site of Science/Business.”
Just Who Do You Call?
Here’s the problem: A $4-billion company formed from the sale of GE’s plastics division to private investors has a very short deadline to separate its IT system software from GE’s mainframe. Oh yes, that IT system has 7,000 employees, vendors and independent contractors on it, all of whom who need access – NOW – to the network of the new company, named Momentive Performance Materials.
So who you gonna call? Why, Tampa’s GCA Technology Services, that’s who. At least that’s who was called by the Waterford, NY-based Momentive.
Here was the solution (in English, please): GCA has a security and professional services division that develops security systems to permit users onto a network, or known more technically as “identity access management.” The 20-year-old Tampa company (www.gca.net) used a Sun Microsystems ID management suite with 40 applications, according to Bill Nelson, GCA’s vice president of professional services. Yet not every Sun application fit Momentive’s needs, he says, “so we had to create a generic sign-on for users.”
Says Nelson: “The biggest challenge was getting all the different people from HR, IT and security to sit in meetings and make decisions. GE had set dates for ‘thou shalt not be on our network,’ and there were financial penalties if we didn’t meet those aggressive dates. But it went off without a hitch.”
The 40-employee GCA was purchased by Jim Quasius in 2002. With annual revenues of $15 million, it also has locations in Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta and Hampton, VA.
Products Pay Off
St. Petersburg’s CareMedic Systems Inc. (www.caremedic.com) rolled out several software products in 2007 that are driving its growth this year, largely by enhancing its flagship product, the electronic Financial Record™ network. That network helps hospitals and health care providers better manage their revenue cycles. One new solution is the OptimizeAR™ which converts paper-based payment data to electronic format and consolidates it with data received electronically.
“We understand the pain points inside hospitals, clinics and ancillary facilities,” says Sheila Schweitzer, the 300-employee firm’s chairperson and CEO. “Our purpose is to give them the ability to improve financial growth. Health systems are under great stress with reimbursement rates declining and larger pieces of revenue coming from patients as opposed to insurance companies. We’ve been able to develop products and services to help get through these tumultuous times.”
Tech Bytes
Bradenton’s GE Security Inc. (www.gesecurity.com) has sold and deployed two CTX 9000 DSi™ explosives detection systems at Brussels-South Charleroi Airport … Tampa’s Switch and Data (www.switchanddata.com) obtained $157.5 million in debt financing from a syndicate of banks including GE Corporate Lending … Tampa’s Telovations (www.telovations.com) is providing its Managed Voice Services products to resellers through Clearwater’s Tech Data Corp. (www.techdata.com) Sarasota’s Sunovia Energy (www.sunoviaenergy.com) is collaborating with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to develop cadmium telluride solar cells
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