Inspekt the unexpekted

Inspekt has been acquired. Twice.

Inspekt has been acquired. 

In 2010, we were acquired by Astaro. Astaro makes Unified Threat Management systems and has about 60.000 UTM installations world wide. 

In 2011, Astaro - including Inspekt - was acquired by Sophos. Sophos is a leading security company, most famous for its endpoint products. 

This is of course great news for us as well as our share holders. But also for our customers, since the Inspekt Log Management product continues as a Sophos product only with a much larger company behind it, more resources, and more ideas for innovation.

It also marks the end of the Inspekt blog and the Inspekt web sites. 

Since this will be our last post, I wanted to quote one of the first things we wrote publicly. 

Moving ideas into products is one of the most exciting activities I can imagine. At Inspekt, we try to continuously come up with new ideas that are different from what is expected. 

Our motto is to Democratize Log Analysis. Bring what used to be Enterprise class functionality into the hands of more modest operators and security professionals. We do this by utilizing the latest technologies such as cloud computing. And by keeping costs low and focusing on core functionality and usability. 

On this blog, I write about life inside a startup. About our product, the technology we use, and the fun we have trying to bring it all together, and deliver products that the customer loves. 

I hope you will join in the discussions, and help us make Inspekt even better.

For more about me, see LinkedIn. For more about Inspekt, see our web site. 

A big thank you goes out to everyone involved in Inspekt - our employees, customers, partners, investors.

Best regards
Søren Maigaard

Living without corporate IT assets

Gartner predicts that by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets - in no small way due to cloud-enabled services. This is one of the top predictions from 2010 to showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and beyond.

"Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.
The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee's desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points."

See Gartner for details

Wishing you a wonderful 2010

We would like to thank you all for a great year - and wish you a wonderful New Year with lots of excitement and success.

Iværksætter skifter fra hackerværn til driftsikkerhed

 Inspekt is featured in the Danish business paper ErhvervsBladet, describing the transition of Inspekt technology from pure Security to include Operations, as a reaction to the conservative security market - and the re-branding of "Inspekt Security" as "Inspekt".

The Log Management SaaS offering "InspektOnline" provides IT departments with a single online tool to help both Security and Operations through centralized cloud-based log management.

See the full Danish article online: Iværksætter skifter fra hackerværn til driftsikkerhed

Inspekt Speaking at "Cloud Conference", Jan. 13. 2010

 

Soren Maigaard (CTO, Inspekt) will be speaking at the upcoming Cloud Computing conference, and presenting the case of “Building a Security Product in the Cloud”: How and Why Inspekt chose to build its InspektOnline Log Management SaaS (www.InspektOnline.com) using Amazon Web Services.

The Conference targets the Danish public sector, and is particularly relevant as Q2 2010 will also see a unified SKI agreement for public sector purchasing of Cloud and ASP.

The conference will take place in Copenhagen (DK) and has the following agenda:

Program (Danish):

9.00 Registrering og networking

9.30 Cloud Computing - The Big Picture

- Professor Michael R. Nelson, Georgetown University.

Konferencen åbnes med en introduktion til hvad Cloud Computing er, hvorfor Cloud Computing er vigtigt og en diskussion af de udfordringer, som skal overvindes.

Michael R. Nelson forsker i internettets fremtid samt fremtidsteknologier og trends og rådgiver blandt andet OECD om Cloud computing.

10.00   Scenen er sat - Fem spørgsmål til cloud computing

- Michael Hald, konsulent, KL.

Scenen sættes med de fem største spørgsmål om cloud computing.

10.30   Den fulde cloud-løsning

- Magnus Andersen, medstifter af PodcastMachine.

Case: PodcastMachine får alle deres it-ydelser fra skyen.

10.50   Pause og networking

11.15   Sikkerhed: Mere af det samme klarer ikke opgaven

- Jens Roed Andersen, Chief Information Security Officer hos Arla Foods

- Jakob Illeborg Pagter, Innovationschef for Center for it-sikkerhed på Alexandra Instituttet.

I takt med at nye forretningsmodeller opstår indenfor IT, vil ikke kun Cloud-baserede løsninger, men også traditionelt hostede løsninger i fremtiden stå overfor en række sikkerhedsmæssige udfordringer, som ikke kan løses med den traditionelle perimeterbaserede sikkerhedsmodel. Der er behov for at tænke ud af boksen og se på nye modeller for sikre IT services og leverancer

Hør hvordan Jens Roed Andersen, ser på fremtiden og hvordan Arla Foods forholder sig til disse udfordringer - og hør nogle konkrete løsningsforslag baseret på en helt ny sikkerhedsmodel, fra Jakob Illeborg Pagter, Innovationschef for Center for it-sikkerhed på Alexandra Instituttet.

12.00   Leverandørerne i skyen

2 minutters elevatortaler fra standholderne.

12.30   Frokost og networking

13.30   Hvor modent er cloud computing – og hvor kan vi starte?

IT- og Telestyrelsen og KL deler ud af den viden der er blevet indsamlet i det første år med projektet ”Cloud computing i det offentlige”.

14.00   Erfaringer fra virkeligheden i skyen

- Simon Kaastrup-Olsen, eMarketing Manager for World Climate Community, Københavns Kommune, Teknik og miljøforvaltningen.

- Kasper Pedersen, administrerende direktør for Process 2 eBusiness.

Case: World Climate Community på Amazon AWS skyen.

14.15   Er det sikkert at bygge sikkerhedsløsninger i skyen?

- Søren Maigaard, Chief Technical Officer hos Inspekt.

Case: Hør hvordan og hvorfor Inspekt har bygget deres log management løsning på Amazon's elastic computing infrastruktur. Søren Maigaard vil fortælle om baggrunden for valget af cloud teknologi og udfordringerne i at bygge en sikkerhedsmæssig forsvarlig infrastruktur på en platform, hvis opbygning hemmeligholdes af Amazon.

Desuden diskuteres nye sikkerhedsbegreber som er opstået i forbindelse med cloud teknologien - bl.a. Denial of Business Case.

14.40   Pause og networking

15.00   Hvordan gør du? - Migration til skyen

- Martin Høegh Mortensen, fuldmægtig, IT- og Telestyrelsen.

Hør hvordan IT- og Telestyrelsen flyttede Digitalisér.dk til Amazon’s AWS sky – hør hvilke overvejelser der blev gjort inden flytningen og hvad det hele endte med.

15.40   Cloud computing - hvilke tanker gør man sig i andre lande?

- Martin Bellamy, direktør for den britiske regerings Office of the Government CIO & SIRO.                 

Den Britiske regering udgav i sommers en digitaliseringsstrategi hvor cloud computing var nævnt som en del af fremtiden. Martin Bellamy vil give et indblik i den Britiske regerings tiltag og visioner for cloud computing, som en del af den offentlige it-admnistration i England – specielt har de fokus på oprettelsen af en ”government-cloud” dvs. en privat sky for den offentlige sektor i England.

16.15   Afslutning på dagen

16.30   Networking

See details

When AdWord placements go bad...

There are many worlds out there, and if you are not careful your message may end up in the wrong one.

An automated placement of a recent InspektOnline ad targeting IT professionals, ended up fighting "Fireplace Logs" for the attention of people looking to improve temperature and comfort at home. That becomes a complete waste of ad-money and certain bounce off our website if they click it. Doesn't matter how many impressions it may generate.

Other low-quality placements included http.com and netlog.com...

AdWord placement logic may be smart, but its not that smart.

The Networking Lunch is back - presenting Inspekt

We will be presenting InspektOnline at the IT-university/5te Networking Lunch on Thursday.

Inspekt has built the worlds first cloud-based solution for managing server logs. Archiving and analysis of customer logs takes on Amazon's Cloud infrastructure (Amazon Web Services), where unlimited storage and processing power is available, and the customer access the solution through his/her browser.

Come and listen to why Inspekt chose to use cloud technology, and how to safely connect your local network to the cloud.

Where and when:
ScrollBar (IT-University, Copenhagen, DK), Thursday Nov. 19th (11.45 - 12.30)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Completes SAS70 Audit

Congratulations (and thanks) to the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, that we run InspektOnline on, as they have successfully completed its SAS70 Audit. For more details see: http://aws.amazon.com/security

From AWS Newsletter:
Amazon Web Services has successfully completed a Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS70) Type II Audit, and has obtained a favorable unbiased opinion from its independent auditors. SAS70 certifies that AWS has had an in-depth audit of its controls, specifically as it relates to operational performance and security to safeguard customer data. We have updated our security overview whitepaper to reflect the results of our SAS70 Audit, as well as other additions. You can download the whitepaper at the AWS Security Center.

MatchMaking konference

Today - Inspekt will be participating in the ITU (IT-University Denmark) MatchMaking konference, which brings together students (the talent) and IT companies (the employers) to get to know each other, and identify job and project opportunities. (http://www1.itu.dk/sw368.asp) 

So come visit our stand !

Other participating companies include:

Rambøll Informatik, Danfoss, DR Interactive, AIESEC Copenhagen Business School, Nationalbanken, NNIT, Deloitte Business Consulting, Siemens, Accenture, Radiometer, Danske Bank, KMD, Netcompany, Rehfeld, Kraftvaerk A/S, ATP, Sirius IT, Maconomy, Jobindex, Assurator, IBM og IT-Jobbank.

Inspekt speaks at OWASP

On Wednesday the 11th of November, I will be speaking at the OWASP meeting in Copenhagen.

The topic is our use of cloud technology and why we have chosen to build our log analysis solution on Amazons infrastructure.

Being OWASP, the security implications of our choices will naturally be covered as well. 

We have put a lot of effort into creating a secure environment for our customers. For example, access to logs is always on a read-only basis - even with admin rights. And we use encryption both for log delivery and web application access as well as two-way SSL authentication using certificates. 

I hope to see you there. 

InspektOnline (SaaS) released

We're thrilled to announce that Inspekt has just released InspektOnline SaaS, the on-demand log management solution for small and midsize companies !

Built on Amazons cloud-infrastructure and based on our own InspektOne 3.0 technology for log monitoring and analysis this online marvel brings Log Management to the masses.

For more details go to www.InspektOnline.com - and check the "Plans and Pricing” page for you own free version !

Your network generates over a million log messages a day...
5 of these are really important...
Can you find them ?