Light Point Security LLC this year expects to launch its first product, Light Point Web Enterprise, a secure web browsing solution for company networks. The startup is collaborating on commercializing the product with Northrop Grumman Corp. through a program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County incubator in Catonsville.
“Northrop Grumman is helping us to develop and polish our product,” says Chief Operating Officer Zuly Gonzalez, who cofounded the startup with CEO Beau Adkins. Both are former National Security Agency employees.
Light Point takes a non-traditional approach to cybersecurity. Unlike the standard detection-based approach to determine if a website is safe or infected, Light Point uses an isolation-based approach to protect company networks from web-based malware.
“We assume all websites are malicious and we treat them exactly the same way – virus or safe – so there is no way for a malware site to get into a computer and infect the corporate network,” says Gonzalez.
Light Point’s proprietary software uses virtualization and cloud technologies to isolate and enclose each employee’s browsing sessions. “We prevent the network from getting infected by preventing websites and web content from even getting on the computer,” she says.
Founded in 2010, Light Point Security moved into the Cyber Incubator at bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park last year. The company has tested different versions of its product, including an earlier version that rented space for customers through a cloud service provider. The current version allows the customer to run the product on its own network or its own cloud space.
“The idea is to give them control,” says Gonzalez.
Light Point is planning to sell the product through a yearly subscription fee of $40 to $50 per employee. It will market the product to commercial enterprises, primarily medium- to large-sized companies, and expand to government agencies in 2014.
Gonzalez says that Northrop Grumman is helping the company commercialize its product with technical and business advice.
Light Point Security is a finalist in the InvestMaryland Challenge in the IT category, and will hear by mid-April if it has won the $100,000 prize. The startup is privately funded. The cofounders, who are the startup's two employees, are considering an angel financing round of, perhaps, $500,000, in the future.
Source: Zuly Gonzalez, Light Point Security LLC
Writer: Barbara Pash