Who did DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen visit in Silicon Valley?

A few weeks ago, I had a blog posting about how Defense Department CIO Terry Halvorsen’s visit to Silicon Valley would have an impact on a key department-wide IT security project.

Halversen told our sister publication FCW.com that he want to add the requirement that big data analytics would be used harvest security insights from the Joint Regional Security Stacks, a collection of servers, switches and software tools. He wants DOD network operators to have a clearer view of network traffic.

The analytics would include looking at data that isn’t intuitively security related.

He said he got the idea when he toured several Silicon Valley when he visited California in April. At the time of my blog post we only had the names of a few companies. But now, that’s to his office, we have the complete list.

A few names are household – Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Oracle, Brocade, Cisco, Intel and Autodesk. But a lot are not. In all, he visited with 29 companies.

Below is the list and a short description – minus the brand name companies I’ve already listed.

• Accel – a venture and growth equity firm in Palo Alto, Calif. They have been involved in funding companies such as Facebook, cloudera, Etsy and Spotify.
• AlienVault – a maker of a unified security management platform and operates a crowd-sourced threat intelligence exchange known as the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange.
• Apigee – a maker of an API platform that allows businesses to security share data and services across multiple devices and channels.
• AppDynamics – The company develops products to monitor the performance of applications and collect and analyze performance metrics.
• Bit9 + Carbon Black – The company has an endpoint security solution that combines continuous and real-time monitoring with threat detection and a recorded history to identify and respond to threats as well as focus on prevention.
• CoreOS – Focused on open source security solutions focused on the server infrastructure.
• Docker – Open platform developer for distributed applications. 
• DTex Systems – The company has security solutions focused on insider threats, compromise of devices, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and managed services.
• Improbable – The company is developing an operating environment to build simulated worlds that can be used to gain insights into complex systems.
• Jasper – They describe themselves as the “on switch for the Internet of Things.
• MarkLogic – Makes an enterprise NoSQL database.
• Mesosphere – The company makes what it calls a “new kind of operating system” that organizes your infrastructure as if it was a single computer.
• Okta – An integrated identity management and mobility management service.
• Qualys – A provider of information security and compliance cloud solutions.
• Qumulo –Products to store, manage and curate data. 
• Red Owl – Data analytics to assess insider risk, surveillance and investigation and information leakage.
• Shape Security – The company is focused on battling automated attacks at all three levels of the website – the code level, object level and GUI level.
• Tanium – Develops products for endpoint security and management.
• Trifacta – Big data solutions that focus on the user experience to increase productivity and let business analysts work directly with the data.
• Vectra Networks – The company is focused on advanced persistent threat defense with real-time detection and analysis of active network breaches.

As I look at this list of companies, one thing that pops out at me is the focus on security, big data analytics and infrastructure management.

I also did a quick scan of the vendor list of several of the largest resellers on the Top 100 and I found that very few of these companies are represented by them. That tells me that they could be ripe partners for primes looking for a unique technology to differentiate their solution.

It also could mean that for some of these companies their products aren’t mature enough, but the fact that they met with the Halversen does say to me that they are interested in the government and may be worth exploring. So I hope you find this list of interest. It is available only to WT Insiders.