The information burglars of the early 21st century are no longer the world-weary men in trench coats espoused by such authors as John Le Carre. The new frontier of espionage involves cyber break-ins on government computer systems. One article in a recent issue of Forbes called it "World War C", the "c", of course, standing for cyberspace.
"Once limited to cybercrime stealing credit card numbers," continued the piece, "cyber attacks are becoming a key weapon for governments seeking to defend national sovereignty, project national power or spy on both friend and foe alike
"From strategic cyber espionage campaigns, such as Moonlight Maze and Titan Rain, to the destructive, such as military cyber strikes on Georgia and Iran, human and international conflicts are entering a new phase in their long histories. In this shadowy battlefield, victories are fought with bits instead of bullets, malware instead of militias, and botnets instead of bombs."
Among the warriors in this technological struggle is Malpitas, California FireEye Inc. (NASDAQ: FEYE), staffing the frontlines in the conflicts with nations while attempting to stop cybercrime at home. Among the most embarrassed victims of such crimes – and one with a lot at stake in avoiding being victims – is the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations; that’s right, NASDAQ.
In recent months, the tech-driven index has been targeted by hackers who authorities say disabled anti-virus software and storing data on multiple hacking platforms. In all, five such thieves, Russian and Ukrainian nationals, made off with as much as $300 million U.S., from NASDAQ and several other major corporations.
This week, FireEye threw in its lot with NASDAQ, who announced the index will leverage the FireEye® Threat Prevention Platform to boost defenses against cyber attacks on its exchanges. The FireEye Multi-Vector Virtual Execution™ (MVX) engine will also be employed to strengthen security against Web, e-mail, and file attacks.
The company, with over 1,100 customers (100 of them Fortune 500 companies) across more than 40 countries, claims its FireEye Threat Prevention Platform provides real-time, dynamic threat protection without the use of signatures to protect an organization across the primary threat vectors, including Web, e-mail, and files and across the different stages of an attack life cycle.
On Thursday, FireEye announced that Mobile Threat Prevention, which secures the Android platform, will be available by the end of the calendar year. It’s a new cloud-based platform designed to address threats from the mobile vector.
Google says more than one million Android apps are currently available for download and have been downloaded more than 50 billion times to more than a billion devices, thus creating millions of security and privacy risks, and more than a few headaches.
It was also announced on Thursday that the company’s third-quarter results will be made known on November 7. FireEye’s stock first hit the exchange floor in September, with an initial public offering of more than 15 million shares, priced around the $20 U.S. mark.
Since then, the stock has traveled in a fairly narrow range in price, from $35.25 U.S. to a high of $44.89 soon after the shares were first available. Perhaps out of a mixture of relief that the U.S. government will NOT shut down before Christmas, and general euphoria that NASDAQ needs its product badly, the shares traveled higher by $2.33 on Thursday, or 5.8%, to $42.20.
As the war on cyber crime is thrown more sharply into public focus, FireEye’s role in winning that war will also be closely watched.
