News & Events
Baton Rouge Company New Chief of Security for Many
The Advocate, 06/02/2005
By Ned Randolph
A spate of high-profile cases of security breaches and downright sloppy identity protection by banks and data collection services has vaulted a Baton Rouge technology company to the forefront of the digital security industry.
"TraceSecurity has become the poster child for risk security -- which we don't mind," said Peter Stewart, the president and chief executive officer who helped found the company two years ago.
TraceSecurity, which performs "security audits" on medium-sized companies, has been mentioned in dozens of stories on security lapses by companies that have exposed hundreds of thousands customers and employees. TraceSecurity will also be featured on CNN's "NewsNight" with Aaron Brown, whose crew spent Wednesday at its Baton Rouge offices in the Louisiana Technology Park on Florida Boulevard.
What makes TraceSecurity's service unusual is that in addition to securing a company's computer network, it hunts for weaknesses in its physical security.
"It's amazing. You might have the most-secure computer network possible, but nine times out of 10 we can walk through the front door as a work repair person and get into the data room," Stewart said.
Then, it's simply a matter of setting up a rogue access point and taking control of a company's entire network from a laptop in the parking lot.
"We call it social engineering," Stewart said.
Currently, the company counts 160 clients. "They can see, 'Hey we've been compromised this way, and this is how we can address it through a security policy.' "
Such policies would have been helpful for data collector ChoicePoint, which acknowledged in February that identity thieves had stolen vital information on 145,000 people.
Less than two weeks later, Bank of America admitted it had lost backup tapes with account information on 1.2 million federal workers, including senators and 900,000 Defense Department employees.
Time Warner Inc. failed to encrypt backup tapes of vital information of 600,000 current and former employees that were lost last month by a storage company.
And an MCI analyst lost a laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 16,500 current and former MCI employees when his car was robbed in Colorado.
Those are just a few of what has been a black eye for corporate America, whose grief has been TraceSecurity's boon.
The 38-employee company is set to close on a second round of venture capital funding and has outgrown its three office rooms at the Tech Park.
"We are absolutely busting at the seams," said Stewart, who hopes to sign a lease on a new location in July or August.