Partnership Combines iSIGHT Partners’ Rich, Contextual Cyber Threat Intelligence with Co3 Systems’ Best-in-class Incident Response Platform to Provide Organizations with Automated, Intelligence-led Incidence Response Capabilities

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — July 31, 2013 — Co3 Systems, the leader in Security Incident Response software, and iSIGHT Partners, the leader in global cyber threat intelligence, announced a global technology partnership to improve cyber incident response by integrating actionable threat intelligence.

Co3’s Security Module now delivers analytical information based on iSIGHT Partners’ comprehensive intelligence, offering detailed knowledge regarding attacks, linking observables to methodologies, campaigns, and origins. Because of the partnership, IT security teams using Co3 gain access to iSIGHT Partners’ contextual data to enable correlation of real-time, external threats to critical assets within the organization. Co3 customers simply associate incident artifacts—like a malware hash or the source IP address of an attack—and the system automatically searches iSIGHT Partners’ extensive holdings and connects to related threat intelligence. As a result, organizations instantly receive the precise insight they need to better understand the incident they are facing and inform a quicker and more decisive response.

In order to provide its clients with threat models and threat intelligence, Co3 needed to partner with a company that had a deep understanding of who the attackers are, what they are attacking, and the methodologies they are utilizing. With more than 190 employees across 16 countries speaking 24 different languages, iSIGHT Partners delivers unsurpassed threat intelligence on a global level.

“Cyber threats are increasing faster than incident responders are able to meet them,” said iSIGHT Partners CEO John Watters. “More flashing lights warning them of more attacks is not the answer. Intelligence that clearly articulates who the perpetrators are, their motives, and their methodologies so you can adapt your defense is the answer.”

Co3’s security module transforms incident response from a manual, chaotic, and stressful process to one that is efficient, compliant, and best-of-breed. Co3 provides instantly generated, detailed, incident response plans that provide information essential to incidence response.

“Actionable intelligence is vital to incident response teams,” said John Bruce, CEO at Co3 Systems. “With this iSIGHT Partners integration, our clients now have an intelligence-led security model, automatically correlating intelligence with the incidents they are facing and translating that into immediate response.”

iSIGHT Partners’ cyber threat intelligence products have transformed the cyber security industry by providing deep intelligence to the most challenging and often most overlooked phase of security: adversarial and motivational context. Without understanding context, it’s often difficult for cyber security teams to prioritize their attention, budget, and personnel in the face of advanced threats and open vulnerabilities.

Follow Co3 Systems:

Co3 Systems Blog: https://www.co3sys.com/blog

Videos:  https://www.co3sys.com/product-videos

Events & Webinar Series:  https://www.co3sys.com/news/events

Twitter: @co3sys

About Co3 Systems

Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Co3 Systems is an innovator in Security Incident Response solutions. The company’s SaaS-based offering enables organizations of all sizes to efficiently prepare for and rapidly manage the Incident Response Process for Security incidents or Privacy breach events. Companies using Co3 demonstrably minimize the costs resulting from incidents. With funding from Fairhaven Capital, the company’s executive team and advisors comprise security experts from world-leading security, software and service organizations. On the web atwww.co3sys.com.

About iSIGHT Partners

Dallas-based iSIGHT Partners is a global cyber intelligence firm that delivers cyber threat intelligence and insight to leading enterprises in business and government. With a global network of security analysts and geographic risk management centers in Washington DC, The Netherlands, Brazil, Ukraine, India and China, iSIGHT Partners is uniquely positioned to monitor and mine the cyber threat ecosystem and deliver proprietary intelligence products and services specific to the threats its clients face. With iSIGHT Partners, enterprises can deploy their defenses more efficiently and effectively, and internal security professionals can more accurately quantify the return on security investments for senior management.  On the web at www.isightpartners.com.

 

Leading Cyber Security Venture Capitalists back Vermont Cyber Security Company’s innovations in testing wireless devices and networks in remote offices

BERLIN, VT (PRWEB) July 30, 2013

Penetration testing innovator, Pwnie Express, closed on its $5.1 million Series A financing led by .406 Ventures and joined by Fairhaven Capital and the Vermont Seed Capital Fund. The new capital will broaden Pwnie’s technology and product base, as well as expand sales and marketing capabilities.

Founded in 2009 by Dave Porcello, Pwnie Express has offices in Vermont and will soon open a Boston office. Winner of SC Magazine’s Industry Innovator and Cyber Defense Magazine’s Best in Class Pentest Award, Pwnie Express initially entered the market with its patent pending pentesting dropbox – the Pwn Plug. In 2012, Pwnie Express received DARPA funding to create the Power Pwn, a pentesting device in the form factor of a power strip. In Q1 2013, the company introduced the Pwn Pad, a pentester’s tablet that has received critical acclaim and is in high demand. In May, Pwnie Express released Citadel PX, a scalable, enterprise class offering which provides the ability to easily and cost effectively conduct security assessments across multiple branch offices in a distributed enterprise.

Rick Grinnell, Managing Director of Fairhaven Capital said, “Pwnie Express is uniquely positioned with its innovative product suite to solve an enterprise security gap, creating a new high growth market segment.”

Maria Cirino, co-founder of .406 Ventures, said, “Pwnie Express has solved the problem of assessing the increased security risk from wireless and BYO devices, especially in remote and branch offices. Their specialized tools and highly differentiated approach to automating remote location penetration testing enables enterprise customers to do more testing for less money which maps well to today’s economic and IT security challenges.” Cirino and Grinnell will both join the Pwnie Express Board of Directors.

About Pwnie Express:
Pwnie Express, established in 2009, is based in Berlin, Vermont with offices in Boston. Recognized by SC Magazine as the 2012 Industry Innovator, and serving over a thousand customers, Pwnie Express is the leading provider of penetration testing products for the distributed enterprise.

About .406 Ventures:
Established in 2006, .406 Ventures— whose name refers to the batting average of Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams during the 1941 baseball season — focuses exclusively on early stage, enterprise IT companies, with a particular focus on highly differentiated companies in the IT security, health care IT and Web infrastructure spaces.

About Fairhaven Capital
Fairhaven Capital is a venture capital firm dedicated to a thesis-based approach to investing in North American technology companies. This approach focuses investment efforts on markets where emerging companies and technologies can create significant value.

About Vermont Seed Capital Fund:
Launched in 2010 with funding from the State of Vermont, the Vermont Seed Capital Fund is a $5M for-profit, permanently revolving, early-stage risk capital fund affiliated with the non-profit Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies (VCET).

Luxury brand uses SocialFlow to execute Facebook campaigns to shape international retail strategy
NEW YORK, July 24, 2013 — SocialFlow, the premier social marketing optimization technology company, today announced that American luxury shoe brand, Stuart Weitzman, is using its Crescendo ad-buying platform to gain deeper insights into the interests and preferences of their international customers. The company built a Facebook ad campaign with SocialFlow that delivered a 5.9% click-through rate (CTR), exceeding the industry standard for Facebook advertising by more than 5,000%. The campaign is also enabling Stuart Weitzman to efficiently test shoppers’ preferences and increase in-store traffic in international markets through social media campaigns.

“Working with SocialFlow, we have been able to isolate and engage certain markets on social media where in-store traffic shows we are gaining traction,” said Susan Duffy, Chief Marketing Officer of Stuart Weitzman. “Advertising through SocialFlow is a highly effective way to find out what interests our audiences. We have been able to test the waters with international audiences on social media. We are using these insights to springboard into new markets.”

Using Crescendo, Stuart Weitzman launched Facebook campaigns that reached new international audiences in several markets, including the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Mexico, South Korea and Japan to determine the traction they are gaining in each market. By targeting keywords derived from real-time social media conversational data, SocialFlow turned Stuart Weitzman’s content into high performing ads geared toward selected audiences in each market.

The results of the ongoing international campaigns have enabled Stuart Weitzman to reach 242,560 Facebook users in Dubai who drove a CTR of 3.6%. In Taiwan, a single post earned more than 10,000 Likes with a 5.9% CTR and translated into about 2,500 Facebook fans, earning Stuart Weitzman 100% of its fans in the country. In Mexico, where the company already had a strong Facebook following, they reached 859,392 users and achieved a CTR of 5.5%. In South Korea, Stuart Weitzman reached 272,682 users, earning 1,785 new Facebook fans, nearly a 100% increase of total fans, and achieved a CTR of 4.6%. In Japan, the campaign earned high engagement, achieving a 5.5% CTR.

“We had a theory that our content would resonate across Asia and these campaigns have been a very good lead to access these markets. Shoppers in Taipei responded very well to an image-based Facebook campaign featuring elegant shoes and local cityscapes. Prior to this campaign, we had almost no Taiwanese fans. On Facebook, Stuart Weitzman’s authentic story becomes accessible and relevant to the social communities we want to reach,” said Duffy.

“Brands, like Stuart Weitzman, are increasingly looking for social media strategies that amplify, extend and target message delivery at the right moment for the most impact in order to reach key audiences,” said Missy Godfrey, CEO of SocialFlow. “Crescendo gives these brands access to a wide range of applications – including our Crescendo, Forte and Cadence platforms – that enables them to not only create the most effective ad campaigns, but to also tie their social media strategies more closely to their core business objectives.”

About SocialFlow:
SocialFlow is the premier social marketing optimization technology company that enables the world’s most powerful brands to drive superior results connecting their earned, owned and paid media strategies. Powered by high-performance, proprietary technology and predictive data analytics, the company offers a full suite of services that expand audience engagement, seamlessly meshing businesses goals with a company’s social media strategy. Founded in 2009, New York based SocialFlow works with numerous well-respected brands and publishers such as Stuart Weitzman, Pepsi, Burberry, Forbes, Walmart, and The New York Times. To learn more about SocialFlow, please visit us at www.socialflow.com.

Latest Release Addresses New Denial of Service Attack Methods Targeting Mid-market Institutions

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—July 23, 2013—Co3 Systems, the leader in Security Incident Response software, today initiated a new process to deliver best practice updates for its Security Module: Dynamic Incident Response. As a result, the Co3 Security Module not only includes the latest incident response best practices based on industry standards and frameworks, but is dynamically updated in response to new threat types as they emerge. The first update of this type provides new guidance for mid-market banks that have been the target of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that are specifically targeted at PDF services. The update expands on existing DDoS best practices—already supported in Co3’s knowledgebase—to address this new attack method thus enabling organizations to respond quickly and decisively.

The U.S. banking industry has been targeted since late in 2012 with DDoS attacks from numerous groups around the world. The latest banking attacks target the mid-market and focus on sites that serve PDFs, leveraging a flood of PDF requests to knock servers offline. Co3’s best practices guidance alerts security teams that may be unaware of this method, and provides them with recommendations for the most effective and efficient countermeasures.

“The variety of attacks and the speed at which they advance and evolve can easily overwhelm even the most seasoned of security teams,” said John Bruce, CEO at Co3 Systems. “The speed of response must be equally aggressive and focused. While detective and protective controls are still being sorted out for these new threats, firms can be confident this updated guidance in Co3 ensures the most effective incident response.”

This new process further expands upon the recent Security Module release that incorporated Dynamic Threat Intelligence feeds, which automatically assess the nature of an attack based on the most current intelligence around attackers. Co3 Systems also recently announced an expansion of its Privacy Module to include complete and comprehensive support for privacy and breach regulations across the European Union.

Pricing and Availability
The new features are accessible to Co3 Security Module customers at no additional cost. The Security Module is licensed annually by the number of seats; support is included in the annual subscription.

Total Security Incident Response
Co3’s Privacy Module was the market’s first daily use and preparedness tool for privacy incidents and is considered today as the industry standard. It provides an easy, automated way to ensure consistency and accountability—across teams, organizations and external stakeholders—in managing incidents that concern Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Co3’s Security Module extends the capability to manage response to security events such as malware infections, phishing-related compromise, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, device or Intellectual Property theft and system intrusions. Together, the Modules provide the most comprehensive solution to prepare, assess, manage, and report on privacy breaches and security incidents.

Follow Co3 Systems:
Co3 Systems Blog: https://www.co3sys.com/blog
Videos: https://www.co3sys.com/product-videos
Events & Webinar Series: https://www.co3sys.com/news/events
Twitter: @co3sys

About Co3 Systems:
Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Co3 Systems is an innovator in Security Incident Response solutions. The company’s SaaS-based offering enables organizations of all sizes to efficiently prepare for and rapidly manage the Incident Response Process for Security incidents or Privacy breach events. Companies using Co3 demonstrably minimize the costs resulting from incidents. With funding from Fairhaven Capital, the company’s executive team and advisors comprise security experts from world-leading security, software and service organizations. On the web at www.co3sys.com.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — July 16, 2013 — Prelert, the first company to provide 100 percent self-learning predictive analytics solutions to address the volumes of data generated by today’s IT systems, today announced it has signed a reseller agreement with LC Systems, a leading provider of data analytics solutions. Headquartered in Switzerland, LC Systems will offer Prelert’s Anomaly Detective for Splunk Enterprise environments to customers across Europe. Anomaly Detective uses machine intelligence assistance to locate problematic behavior changes hidden in huge volumes of operations data.

“Our partnership with Prelert is a strategic step that will enhance our existing data analytics portfolio with innovative technologies,” said Rolf Niederer, CEO at LC Systems. “LC Systems customers will benefit from both our data analytics knowledge and Prelert’s ability to identify causes for problems in applications and networks within a very short time.”

“LC Systems’ exclusive focus on solutions for data analytics and Splunk environments makes them a perfect reseller partner,” said Mark Jaffe, CEO of Prelert. “Their 20-plus years of experience provide the knowledge and support to enable customers to maximize our product and locate problems in operations data before they impact business processes and performance.”

Anomaly Detective is easily downloadable software that installs in minutes as a tightly integrated application for Splunk Enterprise. Anomaly Detective is 100 percent self- learning and requires minimal configuration. It identifies developing issues and provides detailed diagnostic data that enables IT experts to avoid problems or diagnose them as much as 90 percent faster than previously possible.

About LC Systems
An innovative Swiss company operating on a global scale, LC Systems has for more than 20 years offered high-quality data center services along with comprehensive, well- established services in data analytics. The company services every stage in the value chain: from strategic consulting, to implementation and advanced development, to managed services. LC Systems employs more than 100 data center and data analytics experts at its locations in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. For more information about LC Systems, visit http://www.lcsystems.ch/.

About Prelert
The complex IT environments behind today’s online applications and services generate more operations management data than a human can structure or analyze. Prelert is the first company to solve this problem by providing 100 percent self-learning predictive analytics solutions that augment IT expertise with machine intelligence assistance to dramatically improve IT operations. For more information, visit www.prelert.com.


Contact:
Beth Bryant
508-786-3013
bbryant@marketrecognition.com

Software Technology Boosts Storage System Performance and Overall Solution Value

SAN JOSE, Calif. and LINCOLN, Mass., July 10, 2013 – Western Digital^® Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) has acquired privately held VeloBit, a provider of high-performance storage I/O optimization software. VeloBit will be fully integrated into HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital. Headquartered in Lincoln, MA, VeloBit enhances storage system performance with its software technology by adding a transparent acceleration layer utilizing solid state drives (SSDs). Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition builds on HGST’s strategy to enhance the overall value of datacenter storage by integrating HGST SSDs with software. VeloBit’s SSD caching software dramatically accelerates applications and increases server density by enabling higher I/O performance, lower latency, and more efficient usage of processor and storage resources.

Both the VeloBit acquisition and the proposed sTec acquisition by Western Digital reflect acceleration by its HGST subsidiary in the fast growing and strategic enterprise SSD space, augmenting its technology position and IP portfolio with additional engineering and design resources.

“In VeloBit we saw a great team that has developed and commercialized breakthrough I/O optimization software,” said Mike Cordano, president, HGST. “The acquisition of VeloBit is an important step in our strategy to develop robust software capabilities to augment our successful SSD product portfolio.”

“We are convinced that the best way to meet our customers’ needs is to tightly integrate storage optimization software with the hardware,” said Duncan McCallum, co-founder and CEO of VeloBit. “In HGST we have found the ideal partner to continue to develop our ground-breaking caching, compression, and cache coherence technology. This acquisition will enable us to continue to expand the range of products and services we offer to our customers.”

VeloBit has won multiple competitive product benchmarks in the areas of I/O acceleration and server density optimization. VeloBit HyperCache was chosen by Storage Magazine as a 2012 Storage Product of the Year.

VeloBit was founded in September 2010 by an experienced team of storage industry experts and entrepreneurs to commercialize inventions in caching and data compression. The company was funded by Fairhaven Capital and Longworth Venture Partners.

Wells Fargo Securities, LLC has acted as the financial advisor to VeloBit in connection with this transaction.

For more information about VeloBit, a fact sheet is available on the Western Digital website at www.wdc.com or click here.

About Western Digital

Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its subsidiaries design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD^®, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company’s website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

About HGST

HGST (formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies or Hitachi GST), a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, HGST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. HGST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at http://www.hgst.com.

About VeloBit

VeloBit provides high-performance storage I/O optimization software that dramatically boosts VDI and server density, accelerates applications, and boosts database capacity at a remarkably low cost. VeloBit uses Solid State Disk (SSD) to create a transparent application acceleration layer that boosts performance and capacity by up to 20x. The software installs seamlessly in 60 seconds and automatically tunes for fastest application speed. VeloBit deploys and operates transparently to existing applications, storage, or data management.

This press release contains forward‐looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward‐looking statements include statements concerning the anticipated benefits of the VeloBit acquisition and management’s anticipated plans and strategies for the VeloBit business. These forward‐looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward‐looking statements, including the possibility that the expected benefits of the acquisition may not materialize as expected; failure to successfully integrate VeloBit’s products, capabilities and employees with HGST; and other risks and uncertainties listed in Western Digital Corporation’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including Western Digital Corporation’s recent Form 10‐Q filed with the SEC on May 3, 2013, to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward‐looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward‐looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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Western Digital, WD and the WD logo are registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries. HGST trademarks are intended and authorized for use only in countries and jurisdictions in which HGST has obtained the rights to use, market and advertise the brand. VeloBit and the VeloBit logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of VeloBit, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies.

WALTHAM, Mass., July 9, 2013 – Organizations defending against malicious insiders or cyber attackers must create a layered or “kill chain” defense across the enterprise, understanding and covering all critical points. But with the amount of data to steal rising fast, most companies do not have the specialized resources or data security expertise to succeed. This makes the case for employing a managed security service that can detect and stop attacks as they unfold in real time. This was the message delivered by Dan Geer, security expert and CISO of technology investor In-Q-Tel, the technology investment arm of the CIA, and Enterprise Information Protection leader Verdasys during a live webinar, “Cyber Defense Managed Service – a Force Multiplier.” To listen and view the presentation, visit: http://www2.verdasys.com/managed-service-cyber-threat-geer-record-pr.

“Most information theft is silent and prevalent because the majority of firms don’t know what information they have or how information movement happens, while relationships with counterparties further complicate the situation,” said Geer. “An effective program against cyber attack takes advantage of the body of knowledge that grows daily and leverages services that can give companies the jump start they need to avoid wasting time and money to get real risk management and data protection as quickly
as possible.”

Geer advised it is difficult for enterprises of any size to create a comprehensive and effective security
practice, while most strategies focused on “walling the opponent off” are not sufficient. Similarly, “walling critical data in” and “x-raying anything that moves” are necessary, but also not sufficient, because the best attackers have already eclipsed them. Geer suggests a managed service focused on seeing, correlating, verifying and stopping the exfiltration of a company’s sensitive data such as mitigating the risk of insider threat can offer a robust array of benefits including:

• Minimum startup latency – the ability to get something up and running fast
• Specialty labor, overcoming a growing lack of human resources
• Maximum currency – defense against the latest attack methodologies
• Minimum surprise – allowing for the design of mitigations to match what can’t be prevented

“A kill chain defense deploys controls across all stages of an attack independent of infrastructure and can be extremely valuable in frustrating the opponent,” said Geer. But cyber defense layers must cover all critical points, and must be context sensitive in near realtime. Geer pointed out attackers must complete all steps in their attack plan to succeed, while firms need stop only one to send the attacker back to the beginning. A kill chain defense which gathers and correlates data from all possible stages of a cyber attack has the best chance of deploying effective defensive controls to the stages where the attack is most vulnerable. Verdasys recently introduced Managed Service for Cyber Defense (MSCD), a fully managed, outsourced service for companies and government agencies that need to prevent
increasingly sophisticated malware and persistent cyber attacks from stealing sensitive data. See our new Verdasys case study: “CDI Launches Aviation Company DLP Program on Short Runway” here: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/2240184723/Case-study-CDI-launches-aviation-company- DLP-program-on-short-runway.

MCSD allows security teams to benefit from the expertise of a team practiced in providing insider and cyber attack prevention, detection and containment serving more than 240 global 2,000 customers and government agencies for over a decade. With no additional headcount or hardware required — and without the need to learn and manage multiple defensive and forensic tools — organizations can rely on the new managed service to help them gain unprecedented control over data that hackers covet, ensuring the organization’s ability to stay on top of changing threats, build and deploy defensive policies and stop advanced malware from stealing sensitive data.

Geer, an entrepreneur, author, scientist, consultant, teacher and architect, is former chief scientist at Verdasys, former CTO of @stake, a consultant and an officer in a number of startups. He has provided industry leaders with high-level strategies in all matters of digital security and in promising areas of security research. He ran the development arm of MIT’s Project Athena, where his staff pioneered Kerberos, the X Window System. A widely noted author in scientific journals and the technology press, Geer has co-authored several books on risk management and information security.

Access a recording of the webinar at http://www2.verdasys.com/managed-service-cyber-threat-geer- record-pr.

Download the new Verdasys whitepaper: “Cyber Attack Defense: a Kill Chain Strategy” at http://www2.verdasys.com/verdasys-cyber-threat-whitepaper-PR.

About Verdasys

Verdasys (http://verdasys.com) provides Enterprise Information Protection solutions and managed services to secure sensitive data and assure the integrity of business processes, enabling midsize and global businesses to successfully compete in collaborative and mobile environments. Digital Guardian, a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention, is a proven technology platform that provides complete, policy-based data lifecycle monitoring, classification, control and forensics on endpoints and servers, virtual machines and enterprise applications, networks, mobile devices and cloud environments. Digital Guardian protects IP and regulated data from compromise by insiders, contractors, partners and targeted cyber attacks. Since 2003, millions of Digital Guardian agents have been deployed to protect critical data for global leaders in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, high technology, energy, financial services and government.
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Contact: Betsy Kosheff, 413-232-7057 bkosheff@verdasys.com