2010 American Security Challenge Generates at Least 14 Winners
Washington, DC, September 2010 – After thorough screening by over 100 experts, 14 companies were selected for customer and investor awards at the 2010 American Security Challenge (ASC) announcement ceremony held September 23 in the Washington DC area. The American Security Challenge is the nation’s premier program to identify innovative technology that has security applications/implications and accelerate its deployment into the defense and intelligence community as well as private sector critical infrastructure owners.
This year 150 companies (known as Challengers) submitted technology for the pilot and investor awards resulting in 13 different Challengers selected by award partners for a total of 16 awards. Four Challengers-- Bit9, BlueCat Networks, Chiliad, Pikewerks, Rapid7 and Triumfant were selected to participate in pilots (which are sponsored by Pilot Award Partners including ArcSight, ManTech, Intuit, and others). Seven Challengers-- Oculis Labs, RoundTrip, Widetronix, CipherOptics, Techno-Sciences, AginCourt, Rsignia and Harbor Wing were picked for final investment consideration by Investor Award Partners Grotech Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Active Angel Investors, Blue Heron Capital and .406 Ventures. Challengers-- Rapid7 and Pikewerks were selected for both pilot and investment awards. Additionally, Raytheon selected one other Challenger to apply for Mentor Protégé status program in conjunction with Department of Defense and Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Last year’s Challenge resulted in over $10M of term sheets, funding, sub-contracts and teaming agreements. “I think we’ll be closer to $25M this year for two reasons,” said ASC Advisory Board Chairman Roger London. “This year has seen a ten-fold increase in our traction with the consumers of security technology (defense, intelligence and Fortune 500 markets), and the near-term ‘deployability’ of the technologies submitted is much higher this year.”
“This is useful for ArcSight to explore all these new technologies,” said new Public Sector Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Prescott Winter, formerly CTO of the National Security Agency until recently moving to ArcSight. “We picked up a large number of pilots…and will have our product facing folks get involved to talk about the value to our customers. We are very excited about it; it is a valuable experience for the whole company.”
The daylong program included presentations from a number of the winning Challengers, discussions between industry security thought leaders and the presentation of the Patriot Award. This year’s Patriot Award was presented to General Keith B. Alexander, Director of the NSA and Commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command who accepted the award on behalf of those at “NSA and CCS who protect this nation day in and day out with very little publicity. They are in fact the true Patriots.”
Jumpstarting the program’s activities were a “Fireside Chat” with Governor Tom Ridge, moderated by FOXNews intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge. The country’s first DHS Secretary warned, “Cyber-war represents the biggest lurking threats for the U.S. We are under attack constantly. The targets are not the typical military targets present in a physical war, but a mix of critical private and public infrastructure, including gas, power and communications grids.”
Raytheon’s Terry Downing, Manager of Special Projects was very pleased with Raytheon’s outcomes, “We were absolutely amazed; the benefits have been fantastic. We ended up actively pursuing relationships with seven companies. That’s a phenomenal win for us…and really pays tribute to the veracity of the American Security Challenge.”
“The process was not cumbersome and we are thrilled,” said one of the award winners Larry Butera, CEO of Rsignia. “The Challenge gave us a great deal of exposure. For a small company with limited marketing budget, it’s a great opportunity and was a tremendous experience for us.”
Among the winners and event presenters, the audience selected AginCourt as the Challenge’s Most Promising Technology in an exciting real-time text vote.
ASC will continue to pulse the market for new technologies and refresh its current inventory of Challengers as they upgrade their products, secure outside capital, acquire key customers or other note-worthy activities.
ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY INITIATIVE (NSI)
The National Security Initiative is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting America's long-term national security interests by uniting the supply of innovative technology with the demand for new valuable security technology. The principle channel is the American Security Challenge, a collaborative annual technology contest that brings innovators, technology customers, early stage investors and serial entrepreneurs together to accelerate the adoption of technology to help safeguard American freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Learn more about NSI at www.NationalSecurityInitiative.com and about ASC at www.AmericanSecurityChallenge.com.
ABOUT AMERICAN SECURITY CHALLENGE (ASC)
As the largest competition and matchmaking opportunity in the nation, the American Security Challenge is the center of gravity for the critical stakeholders in the security technology market. By quickly identifying solutions to mission critical and highly visible issues, the American Security Challenge public/private partnerships are working to secure our nation's citizens, our assets, and our economy.
ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY OPERATIONS CORP (NSOC)
Newly formed to support NSI and in response to the increasing demand for competent, efficient, and rapid identification and screening of innovative technology, the National Security Operations Corp (NSOC) pro-actively scouts innovation communities for technologies that match the requirements of national security customers/users).
As such, NSOC provides support to the federal defense and Intelligence Community, private sector Critical Infrastructure Owners and Fortune 500 companies. This program provides the identification and/or piloting (stress-testing) of innovative technology to determine if a technology can address priority security challenges (cyber, IED, checkpoints/border, portable/renewable power, passenger/cargo screening, data fusion, etc).
NSOC is an effective front-end scout helping scour the technology landscape to identify potential solutions, or provide comparative competition to a specific vendor under consideration. This pro-active scouting and vetting offers its customers confidence they have uncovered the most viable solution providers to various requirements (or in some cases provide the insight that technology vendors have not yet provided a deployable cost effective solution).
Media contact: Roger London, (410) 340‐5335 Roger@AmericanSecurityChallenge.com
