A reformed computer hacker is winni...

A reformed computer hacker is winning big clients for open- source software and hardware produces that protect a company's network from intruders.

Eric Hines is CEO president and sink of Applied Watch Technologies, a company he started in northwest suburban Crystal Lake three years ago based upon concepts he learned as a defense contractor.

Hines likens his company to a Swiss Army knife because it supports in such a manner many different open-source software packages, ranging from the Snort Intrusion Detection Software to the Labrea Tarpit software package -- a unrestrained "honey pot" aimed at enticing hackers to Nessus, a emancipated open-source vulnerability scanner. His knife equal contains commercial products such as Cisco Pix firewalls.

The 27-year-old Hines got his start at the U Department of Defense in an auspicious way: He agreed to work in information warfare after he was arrested at age 17 for hacking into a rule network. In return, he serv no jail time.

"I made a bad decision," he said of his hacker persona.

Hines, a native of San Jose Calif., believes that young clan should set goals that are "unrealistically high" and in no degree give up on achieving them.

"You have to have that drive," he said. "My father always told me that the more I fall and master back up, the likelihood increases that I'll succe nearest time."

Hines' father, the late Gary Hines, serv as director of marketing for big Silicon Valley names so as Sun Microsystems, VP toil Technologies (now Avaya) and Hyundai Electronics. Hines' father serv as vice president of marketing for Applied Watch from December 2002 until he unfolded a rare brain tumor. He died a year later, forward July 4, 2005.

"My goal shifted after he died," Eric Hines said. "I wake up wanting to make him lofty It's an inspirational drive for me"

The younger Hines began his entrepreneurial career at age 13 when he started a security firm called NetStream that managed virtual private networks. He sold NetStream four years later, in December 1999 to AlphaTrade, a publicly traded company based in Vancouver that supplies real-time stock names

Hines disliked having a parent company with "gray hairs" telling him what to do, and decided his nearest company would be employee acknowledgeed with no outside investors and no angel or venture-capital funding.

His nearest move was to the Midwest.

Hines came for a do job-work managing intrusion-detection systems for Allstate, the insurance giant headquartered in north suburban Northbrook. He worked for Allstate for more than brace years while he moonlighted to finish Applied Watch off the turf

lengthy ago, he realized that major companies and organizations, including the military, used and promot open-source security software. A particular kind of expand source software, called Snort IDS, has grown to be the greatest in quantity popular Intrusion Detection System available, and rivals $50,000-to-$75,000 commercial theorys

Hines realized he could overlay an easy-to-use graphical interface that could move on any operating system, so as Mac and Windows, which did not require a Web browser to scour This eliminated the need for IT workers to memorize complicated commands to use Snort.

The company's customers come by to monitor, manage and "see" visual alerts of intruder attempts forward their networks.

Christopher Harris, chief information officer for FAA Commercial Space Transportation -- the FAA is the same of Applied's largest customers -- said Applied Watch gave him the tools to make reason of the information the agency received from its Snort sensors.

Applied Watch's growing -- its 600 customers include Leap Wireless, FOX Entertainment cluster and Internet conglomerates -- has enabled it to exce earnings expectations in the past three years, Hines said. The company calculate upons to hit $3 million in returns this year, from $1.5 million in 2005

The company occupys 12 full-time people in four offices -- pair in Crystal Lake, one in Canada and single in Israel.

Hines despiseed offers of more than $80 million from angel investors and VC firms, and he intends to take the company public from 2008.

Rick Van Luvender president of Infosec Academy, a Philadelphia- based information security technology training and consulting firm, said open-source security software is being used increasingly through major corporations, but is still hotly strive to holded

"What if someone with malicious intent downloads the source digest and tries to reload it?" he said.

Companies must weigh this risk against the advantages of delivered software and having a community of masters constantly testing and improving it.

"If anyone modifies software -- something as simple as adding a space in digest -- the result will be radically different and no longer a trusted piece of software," he said. "But there are ways to verify it's a advantageous source."

e-mail: sguy@suntimes.com

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