JETNET Internetworking Services Inc

http://www.jetnet.ca

Last month, JetNet was involved in a red alert issued by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Co-ordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Fundamental flaws had been discovered in the way some computers send information to one another using a language called Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). After testing various networking devices from such companies as Nortel Networks Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc., CERT and a Finnish university programming group found problems with SNMP that hackers could exploit to potentially shut the entire Web down. As soon as CERT issued its Feb. 12 warning, JetNet's senior technical team began testing each of its customers' SNMP configurations searching for exploitable vulnerabilities. About one in four customers were found to be invulnerable. As for the rest, the JetNet team worked with technology vendors, such as Cisco and Nortel, to obtain the right patch to reconfigure the JetNet customer devices to ensure they are protected from any outside attacks. While the exercise was prompted by the CERT alert, it reflects the role JetNet plays as its customer's information-technology security provider. JetNet builds firewalls, creates virtual private networks, implements intrusion detection, anti-virus and content filtering programs, and adds patches to networks and systems whenever required. In addition, JetNet provides 24/7 monitoring at its state-of-the-art Internetworking Operations Centre at the company's Preston Street headquarters. "We're like an alarm company that serves as the IT security eyes and ears for our customers, which gives them the confidence that someone is watching their Internet network 24 hours a day, seven days a week," says CEO Ron Ross. "For instance, if a hacker attempted to break into a firewall, we immediately contact the customer." He says that since Sept. 11, JetNet's corporate customers, which number about 100 and involve 350 network locations in eight countries around the world, have revisited their entire security practices. "Issues like preventing someone that's unauthorized to have access to networks or to be able to impersonate somebody and get access to corporate assets, have become vitally important. Sure, an organization might be able to recover data following a hacking, but that organization might never be able to recover the credibility it had with its customers over the security violation." JetNet has attained its own credibility in the business world. Profitable since its first year, the company has completed three rounds of financing worth a total of $8 million. Mr. Ross now hopes to capture half of the $1-billion Canadian market for managed security services by 2003. "I think we can do it. We've been setting the bar for these services in Canada and we're actually the only independent company offering them in this country." When it opened in 1999, JetNet's operations centre became the first in North America focused primarily on delivering Internet security services to sell Entrust Inc. authentication products to customers on a subscription basis. As such, the operations centre not only creates virtual private networks (VPNs -- an electronic tunnel that enables authorized users to send and receive encrypted data), designs firewalls and provides intrusion detection for them, but also equips customers with Entrust public key infrastructure technology services. Indeed, JetNet was born because of VPN technology. In March 1998, Mr. Ross, then Ottawa-based JetForm Corp.'s director of technology and Louis de Bellefeuille, then JetForm's senior technical architect, designed a VPN called JetNet. JetNet would connect all of the company's employees -- from its Ottawa headquarters to sales offices in 15 locations worldwide -- to a secure network that could encrypt, authenticate and transmit voice and data, or support video conferencing on the Internet. JetForm's JetNet worked so well that he wrote up a business plan to create a new company, called JetNet Internetworking Services, which would sell not only VPN technology to other companies but provide them with a comprehensive managed security services package. In April 1998, JetForm's then-president John Kelly agreed to bankroll the idea, investing $100,000 of seed money in return for a third of the new company's equity. The payroll also grew from seven employees, during JetNet's first two years of operation, to the current 57, while the number of JetNet customers has grown from 10 in the first year to 100. Mr. Ross expects JetNet's customer base to expand even more since the company embarked on a channel sales mode in which telcos, like Bell and other companies, bundle JetNet managed security services with their own services.

• 12/8/2013
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