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INTERNAL USE ONLY - NEWS FOR THE PUBLIC ARE AT: www.meliorinc.com/html/press.html
Current Updates to ensure everyone is up to speed:
5/30/2003 - Friday - Short-Term Financial Needs
We continue to allocate time & effort to raise short-term bridge financing. DSL payment crossed path with a disconnect, and due to an error at SBC, the office DSL will be down for another week (thus less frequent updates to the IntraNet). The ongoing cash flow issue, juggling creditor demands and avoiding service interruptions (next one due is power @ the office, among pressing needs such as rent, CA data center fees, etc) is a significant drain on other efforts. Because of these extra time-consuming tasks, the updated ES and BP are completed only this weekend (not as planned earlier) to be sent to a larger base of potential investors. Any reference to bridge finance investors for $25k to $100k is most welcome!
5/30/2003 - Friday - Sales Strategy Refined
As part of the strategy change to focus on iSecure only, we are now building a sales database to gauge sales progress, and a matrix to clearly target potential iSecure customers in the US and EU, classify the sales leads by likelihood to close the sale, and measure success of the sales efforts. The consolidated sales database should be available early next week, with daily updates on the progress. We continue to focus on the 300 largest financial institutions in the US, select other markets/leads, and follow up to a smaller degree with the contacts in the EU.
5/29/2003 - Thursday - The Planet counter-signs Service Exchange Agreement
The Planet (finally) signed the agreement, under which we receive free space (our existing cage, expandable) and unlimited bandwidth (plus waiver of all previous bills) in exchange for delivery of 2 iSecure prototypes for testing now, and 4 Gigabit production systems within 12 months. Matt is also working with The Planet on the joint press releases; this PR info will go properly through the media channels via The Planet, and generate some serious publicity for both parties. We are working hard with IBM to get the agreement with them in place prior, so that the press release can also reflect our partnership with Big Blue. Delivery of the first iSecure prototype to The Planet is scheduled for Monday, June 2nd.
5/29/2003 - Thursday - iSecure Sales to American Family Insurance
The lead from Tuesdays security seminar from competitor Lancope has proven to be hot; American Family Insurance (AmFam, web site, about), the 10th largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. wants to test iSecure as soon as possible, and has confirmed iSecure represents the perimeter protection functionality they have been looking for.
5/29/2003 - Thursday - iSecure Sales to HiVelocity
The dDoS attack on hosting provider HiVelocity in Florida has led to a sales contact; Matt followed up and they are interested in testing iSecure for their infrastructure to avoid future attacks and outages.
5/28/2003 - Wednesday - Strategy Focus on Melior as a Product Company Only
Over the long Memorial Day weekend we stepped back and analyzed our progress in the shift towards becoming a products company with iSecure. The results of this marathon analysis produced some significant changes in our strategy, which we are implementing immediately. By discontinuing the service business, we help allocate all available resources towards the focus to complete the process in becoming a successful products company, and eliminate the drain on resources from a business which cost too much for the revenue it provided. At the same time, by eliminating the service business, we avoid confusion about the company direction in the transformation to a product company, and present a crisp focus in our ES & BP, making the investment opportunity more interesting. We will reflect this adjustment along with the pending IBM partnership agreements to outsource the iSecure Service & Maintenance business, and the agreement to select IBM as our global manufacturing partner. With this step, we eliminate any concerns if we would be able to build a global support organization and operate it profitably, and gain a strong, reputable partner with IBM (which has a proven global infrastructure in place), giving us more credibility, and providing predictable profits from the iSecure service & maintenance business. The initial feedback from potential investors is very positive. Further down the road, IBM is also slated to resell iSecure directly, and with a possible joint development of future iSecure product versions, it allows us to utilize their Research & Development (R&D) resources at a very low cost to us. Along with this change, we discontinue offering complimenting products, such as the Firewall, VPN Gateways, etc, as we have found it distracts from our product focus, and provides more competitive concerns and confusion among the investor community than it helps positioning the role of iSecure within the security architecture. Our external communication reflects this strategy adjustment, and the ExtraNet web site has been updated accordingly. The new ES and BP are going to reflect it as well, and will be made available to a larger scope of potential investors in the United States as well as in Europe.
5/27/2003 - Tuesday - Matt attends Network World Security Seminar
Matt was invited to attend the Network World Security Seminar at the Omni Hotel in the North Texas Telecom Corridor. (seminar details). Matt: One major take away from the discussion: the audience was concerned with how much attention to security should be deployed at the Perimeter versus the Core Network. As you all know, iSecure serves as a front line of defense and is typically a perimeter solution, but it can also be deployed anywhere within a network depending the criticality of the IT assets an enterprise wishes to protect in conjunction with where such assets are logically located in the network. In other words, iSecure is not ONLY a perimeter defense solution.
Nonetheless, it was apparent that the Vendor Panels feedback was unanimously in favor that the majority of overall security threats emanate from the inside out, but of course all of these vendors now focus on Core Network solutions so there is certainly some bias here (p.s. Nobody knew who Deep Nines was, the entire crowd was asked for input on Deep Nines, so I suspect a Deep Nines representative submitted the question, and elected not to be revealed).
Now at this point we have to ask ourselves is it the case that the market is trending away from the perimeter and towards these core solutions? Joels position on the subject was seemingly diametrically opposed.
As a side note, I met with a Lancope sales executive after the show who passed along a lead to American Family Insurance, who was looking at Lancope but was more interested in an actual perimeter defense that blocks bad traffic. So, if that doesnt speak make the discussion crystal clear, I dont know what the hell does. Needless to say we have calls into AmFam already.
5/26/2003 - Monday (Memorial Day) - US Patent office makes patent filings available online
Matt discovered that various patent filings have now been made available on the USPO website; including the iSecure patent application for the US (preceded by the EU filings). This information has apparently been online since April 3rd, 2003. A detailed analysis of this application vs various other dDoS applications to follow. Matt prepared an overview of the hit list for dDoS-related filings from the USPO web site.
5/26/2003 - Monday (Memorial Day) - Exclusive Contract of IP Acquisition extended
The lastest extension of the exclusive contract for Meliors acquisition of the iSecure product and IP arrived from Germany in the morning.
5/25/2003 - Sunday - Content Modifications on the ExtraNet
based on the reviews by Rachel and Matt, we re-phrased some of the content on the external, public web site.
5/25/2003 - Sunday - Announcing new Hosting Customer
Bryan Kidd agreed to a Customer Testimonial, which went up on the ExtraNet today, along with a short press release for the 160 additional domains we host in our own dDoS-safe showcase hosting environment. The domain transition is in progress, and should be completed on May 27th, 2003.
5/23/2003 - Friday - Conference Call with University of St. Thomas scheduled
We made some progress with the U of St. Thomas, which is one of the 5 largest graduate schools of business in the nation (web site), and is also Matts Alma Mater. His involvement with Melior was recently part of the Alumni Newsletter. A conference call has been scheduled for June 9th, with will have all the decision makers at the University (including the CIO) on it - we expect significant progress. A batch of demo DVDs and FIRE-CDs has been shipped to St. Paul in preparation for the call.
5/23/2003 - Friday - CyberMill to become iSecure Customer, not Hosting Client
after working with CyberMill for several weeks, they finally concluded it is too troublesome for them to move all their equipment from St. Louis, MO, to Meliors data center in Dallas. Instead, they want to be a reference customer for iSecure deployment. Matt and John are working with them on the logistics.
5/22/2003 - Thursday - Additional contact at Digital Insight
as it turns out, we have another inside contact at Digital Insight though Boni. John scheduled a follow-up call and we hope to be able to close a sale with them.
5/22/2003 - Thursday - DALnet IRC hosting agreement
Mattias Ahnberg, speaker for the worldwide DALnet IRC network (he is based in Sweden), which has been plagued by dDoS attacks and brought to the brink of its existence, has accepted the terms for Melior to host one of the last US-based IRC chat relay servers. With this agreement, we get a lot of exposure, and another customer testimonial with some punch and publicity. Side note: competitor RiverHead Networks (web site, competitive overview) made a similiar offer, but DALnet was not convinced they could deliver, and Melior also accommodated with a long-term commitment, not just a short-term publicity stunt. (I cannot wait for us to be able to enforce the patents and forbid the competitors to make claims to defend against DoS/dDoS attacks, due to patent infringement! - Thomas).
5/21/2003 - Wednesday - New Pager Features for improved accessability
Brice added the following aliases to e-mail short text messages to the mobile phones:
emergency@ddos.com and emergency@meliorinc.com (Brice, Evan, Thomas), page-support@meliorinc.com (Brice, Evan, page-sales@meliorinc.com (Matt, John), page-matt@meliorinc.com (Matt), page-john@meliorinc.com (John), page-evan@meliorinc.com (Evan), page-brice@meliorinc.com (Brice), and page-thomas@meliorinc.com (Thomas).
5/21/2003 - Wednesday - New hosting customer with 160 domains: AnyWhere Internet
Bryan Kidds hosting provider HiVelocity was dDoSd, taking down ~50% of their network throughout the night; the final straw to close the sale and migrate all of his 160 domains to Melior and dDoS-safe hosting. This is not providing a lot of revenue, but an opportunity to provide great service to a strong supporter of Melior, and also excellent PR. Current Customer List. We are working hard to close the hosting sales for CyberMill and 1stLegal, which DO provide a significant monthly revenue stream.
5/20/2003 - Tuesday - Signed Contract Addendum delivered to The Planet
further progress in inking the deal with The Planet. In return for the exchange of services, they are receiving 2 prototype demo 100 MBit/s iSecure systems, and 4 production Gigabit iSecure systems within 12 months. With this, we exchange services at a list price of ~$1,000,000 for the iSecure systems (our cost: under $100,000), and establish a production reference site at an ISP and Managed Hosting Provider. Now awaiting the counter-signature and mutually agreed text for the press release.
5/20/2003 - Tuesday - IBM Partnership Discussion
Following up on last weeks meetings with Louis McKenna, who heads IBMs Managed Security Services for the Eastern United States and Texas, we met again at The Planet for a demonstration and in-depth discussion. Louis is intrigued with iSecure, and we explored several opportunities for IBM and Melior to work together. Potentially starting off with Melior becoming an IBM Channel Partner, we might engage in an agreement to outsource Meliors iSecure Service & Maintenance business to IBMs Managed Security Services, gaining instant global coverage and a reputable partner (and saving the capital and operational expenses to build our own infrastructure for it), and, further on, access to IBMs reseller channel, under which IBM may resell iSecure and the Maintenance Contracts (the latter requiring a longer lead time to completion). We followed up with a drafted construct, and are awaiting his feedback.
5/20/2003 - Tuesday - Wire Transfer from Europe arrives
Thanks to the new Bridge Finance Investment of $2,500 we were able to re-connect the cell phones, and pay some past-due bills (land lines, office DSL, and among them to avoid gas to be shut down to the Dallas office).
5/19/2003 - Monday - Switzerland Lead to many European Banking Institutions
received a call from Switzerland which may lead to a consorted sales effort with access to the greater number of the European Banking Institutions, as well as leads to potential investors. Subsequent considerations are discussions and fact finding towards the European presence for Melior. Contacted Bill Kleinman at Haynes and Boone regarding details about their European presence, in preparation for the incorporation benefits and tax issues within the EU (Belgium) vs. outside of the EU (Switzerland).
5/19/2003 - Monday - Proposal sent to Omnix/Qatar for Al Jazeera Hosting
following up on our conference call with Omnix in the country of Qatar, we submitted to them the agreement under which they commit to hosting the high-volume Al Jazeera news sites with Melior, pending the successful demonstration at their current hosting provider in southern France. We proposed a $50,000 retainer. Germany has confirmed to be on stand-by for the demo in France. Update 5/21: Omnix confirms receipt of the proposal.
5/17/2003 - Saturday - IntraNet Upgrades for this week: Sales & Group Calendar
Evan is working on a TWIKI implementtion for a Melior-hosted group calendar, as well as an interactive sales data base, to reflect and categorize all ongoing sales efforts in real-time. This helps the sales department to coordinate efforts, especially since Matt and John work more from remote locations than from the Dallas office, and show the activity and progress in sales for the VCs (easier to summarize a current and accurate snapshot for the presentations). Both IntraNet features are scheduled to go live by the end of the coming week.
5/16/2003 - Friday - iSecure Sale & Synergy with Privacy Protection
Caution: this info is under NDA! - We were contacted by Doug Peckover (sample arcticle) from MyPrivacyPolicy.com, who holds global patents on the enforcement and implementation on privacy rules, and with whom Thomas met and co-presented at a WITI conference in February 2002. Doug is looking for iSecure systems to protect his online presence, which he fears is under dDoS threat. It was also determined that both Meliors and Dougs customer base have significant overlap, and a lot of synergy exists, which we will further discuss in a follow-up call on Monday 5/19/03. Small world: IBM Network Security Services Louis McKenna (whom Matt met at the Cyber Crime Seminar on Thursday, and who has a great interest in Melior & iSecure) is on the board of his company. And Startechs Jay Lorenzi, who failed to be one of our bridge investors, volunteered to make an introduction for Doug at AOL, whose CTO is a close acquaintance of Jay from his time as VP of Product Sales at Sun Microsystems. We plan to provide Doug with an iSecure 100 demo prototype against a monthly residual payment, credited against future purchase and replacement with a production system, to cover his DS-3 bandwidth (45 Mbit/s). By the way, Doug also appears to be an accaimpled regatta participant.
5/16/2003 - Friday - Conference call with Sloan Ventures in Detroit
The 45-minute call for initial introduction went well; we discussed the over structure, product detail and financials with Chris Cameron. Sloan Ventures specializes in IT Security companies with an expandable product technology scope. Chris is reading the documentation and website in detail over he weekend, and watches the video; follow-up next week.
5/16/2003 - Friday - Conference Call with the State of Georgias Chief Security Officer
Todays follow-up call with Bob Wynn, CSO for the State of Georgia (article), with whom we have been in communicating for a while, went very well. He watched an online demo via the Internet on our live server at http://64.5.39.36 while we launched several dDoS attacks, and was throroughly impressed. Subsequently, he instructed Kevin Baker, one of his Security Engineers, to take receipt of our F.I.R.E. disk (mailed today), and perform additional testing. Bob Wynn explained that he should have his budget numbers by mid-June for the next fiscal year (beginning July 1st, 2003) and could then discuss how many iSecure systems he wants to get for deployment within his office infrastructure, as well as in the other 150+ Georgia State agencies he is responsible for. Worth noting: he installed Lancopes product StealthWatch, which apparently is not working out too well. Georgia is working on its web portal, and spent significant amounts on the project.
5/15/2003 - Thursday - Web Site Popularity
Seems the hits on our website are developing nicely: Statistics - all visitors (May) - this month (May).
5/15/2003 - Thursday - Matt attends Cyber Crime Forum
through Akuratus Matt was invited to attend a Cyber Crime seminar set up by AIP (Association of Internet Professionals, in which Thomas is a member, and founding member of the Silicon Valley Web Guild, which startet AIP), in which he also meet Grant Sparks, TX Internet Bureau Chief, from the office of the AG of Texas, as well as IBM Managed Security Services. With our DoD SPOCK membership, DISA and NSA contacts, an excellent introduction of iSecure to the local state government. (By the way, AIP works with the Technology Venture Alliance -TVA- which reviews and refers investors - they want a $1,000 non-refundable fee, so canned this one for now).
5/15/2003 - Thursday - Digital Insight (Sales)
John made inroads at Internet Banking Provider Digital Insight, and we have a conference call scheduled with them on Monday.
5/15/2003 - Thursday - Sloan Ventures
New investor lead: Sloan was introduced to Melior through the new sales guy, Eric, who submitted his resume when he read the article about us in the Dallas Morning News; after studying our ES today, they requested a conference call tomorrow afternoon.
5/14/2003 - Wednesday - Negotiations with Germany
Working with our negotiation partner in Munich, Germany, for the extension of our exclusive agreement, and the alternate contract construct. Faxed signed extension contract to Germany, now waiting for the signatures of everyone else in Germany (5 signatures required).
5/14/2003 - Wednesday - US Bank
Working with US Bank to convince them to publicly confirm the successful iSecure test, similar to the Commerzbank statement. Keep your fingers crossed!
5/14/2003 - Wednesday - VC Update: US Venture Partners
received feedback from Geoff Baehr via Ruth, and he sure needs some additional input. Contemplating with Ruth how to proceed best. As a first conclusion, updated the bulletpoints on the public website for iSecure.
And also added a How-To page for iSecure tests with the FIRE CD (for which the ISO image is now available for download)
5/13/2003 - Tuesday - Meliors Gentoo Mirror is up!
The testing for Meliors Gentoo mirror has been completed (an effort driven by Brice and Evan) and access to the mirror machines has been turned over to Gentoos administrators. Shortly, our mirror will go live. Gentoo is the most popular and most advanced Linux distribution available - all of the Melior production systems run on Gentoo Linux as well. Gentoo is particularly popular among the techie communities, providing a lot of worldwide company exposure in this arena for us. The agreement reached with the Planet earlier today enables us to serve an unprecedented amoung of bandwidth to the Gentoo effort, making us highly popular for downloads - and of course the mirror server(s) are safe against dDoS attacks! Press Release on the ExtraNet.
5/13/2003 - Tuesday - Another MileStone Event: The Planet datacenter/ISP agreement
Thanks to Matt Gairs negotiations, the support of the owners of The Planet, and strong interest from SUSE GmbH in Germany (which we were unaware of; and SUSE is one of the largest Linux distributors, going into their 10th year), the Planet has agreed to no longer charge us for the cage and bandwidth at the data center, use as much bandwidth and as much space on the data center floor as we need going forward, in return for one demo 100 Mbit/s iSecure prototype box, a second one in four weeks, and four true Gigabit iSecure production appliances in twelve months. In addition, they will serve as a reference client for Melior, and create their own press and exposure for iSecure, and how they protect a server farm with it. We are waiting for this agreement to be signed off in writing. After the paperwork is completed, this will then also be published on the ExtraNet.
The Planets Chief of Security Craig Rodenberg also likes to make the introduction to SUSE.
5/13/2003 - Tuesday - Results of Doha/Qatar Conference Call
The call wih Suleiman of Omnix (previous proposal) went very well! First, we will be testing/demonstrate iSecure in their current facility in Southern France; if the test proves iSecures capabilities (we know we can prove it), we are getting the Al Jazeera hosting - they are willing to commit to that effect. Secondly, as the sole consultancy for the only ISP in the state of Qatar (Qtel), they want to bring us in to work with Qtel for dDoS protection and Cloaking. Third, they are asking us to provide expertise in a long-term contract to help them build the data center and infrastructure (such as backbone peering) necessary to accommodate all the influx of business and universities, which have come to Qatar recently and continues to come as part of the revitalization of the Middle-East region (a lot of that has to do with rebuilding Iraq and the move of the US troops & bases from Saudi-Arabia to Qatar). In essence, this means a) sales potential for iSecure, b) recurring revenue for hosting services, and c) a lot of publicity to further our cause and get more traction.
5/13/2003 - Tuesday - New European Investor
Just received word from Germany: we are receiving another seed investment between Euro 2,000 and 2,500 in the next few days! Except for one US seed investor with $6,000, all our seed money (~$100k) comes from Europe. Update: the funds will be wired on Thursday 5/15/03.
5/12/2003 - Monday - Feedback from Arkoma/Fontenot
Joel responded in detail, seeking further clarification on his connection with other Startech ventures (Mirage, Metreos) to avoid leakage of information to the competition. Went to-and-fro several times throughout the evening with Joel.
5/12/2003 - Monday - Market Sizing Source
We have been asked numerous times to size the dDoS and Cloaking markets, which are new (no sales of significance in the dDoS market by other vendors - their stuff does not work as advertised, and none in the Cloaking market, no competing product) - now Matt has dug up a company which performs these services for $1,295 - Venture One. Though not the ultimate answer, it does provide a recognized 3rd party validation. Which brings me to the point that with just some cash, we could accomplish so much more!! It is little consolation right now that we have been able to pull off so many accomplishments with so little funds --- which raises the questions how far we could have already gone if we did not have the funding restriction?
5/12/2003 - Monday - Production System Update
Evan and Brice just report the new production environment with LDAP authentication is now working, after extensive testing. With the new system ready for production, we can now add new customers, and have the very latest and greatest security technology on the Internet available!
5/12/2003 - Monday - More VC solicitations
Not alone trusting the interest from the current VCs, we are submitting Executive Summaries to these local investors: The Capital Network, The Dallas Angels, and those listed in the Start-Up Tool Box. Private investor Vickie Heller may not be available also this week, due to her schedule (per Peter Jessens update).
5/12/2003 - Monday - Storm Ventures: Peter Löthberg at STUPI due diligence
Thanks to Jim Potter, we have identified the pope of the Internet, to whom Storm Ventures referred us as part of their due diligence process. According to Tim and Ryan, if we can convince Peter about iSecure, they are in (well, we see about that, since they could not even spell his name... but we shall not leave anything untried). As it turns out, Peter is the ultimate optical Internet guru, and I have contacted him regarding our security product... Also following up with Vint Cerf and BBNs Steve Kent, who have previous knowledge of iSecure.
5/12/2003 - Monday - Haynes & Boone, Bennett Miller, Bank One pledge further support
Bill Kleinman inquired about updates, and later confirmed Haynes & Boone will review any term sheets as the result of VC negotiations, without the retainer requirement. Stopped by at Bennett Miller Company (Mary Volbrecht), and they are still OK with the fact that we still have not paid rent. Our bank manager at Bank One (James L. Ballew) went out of his way twice today to keep us going, despite the shortage of funds.
5/11/2003 - Sunday - Joel Fontenot (Arkoma Ventures/Hunt Ventures) responded
Response was cryptic - he didnt say either way how he wanted to proceed. Expressed that the payment for the IP is a problem; he would want any money invested to go towards the growth of the company directly. I got back to him, explaining that with a fixed payment we get the defined development cost, eliminating the risk of the development, which for our competition has already realized; and also asked him to explain his relationship with Hunt Ventures, whom he said he represented when he approached us (at the time of his visit, he said he represented Arkoma Ventures, whose domain name he had just lost).
5/10/2003 - Saturday - 3G respond to Technical Questions
After six days finally got an answer to the UDP question: iSecure filtering is currently not applied to UDP traffic; that is why UDP traffic is blocked. They feel it could be implemented, they simply did not have the resources at the time to code that functionality. The fingerprinting behavior was NOT re-coded with the new release from them in Feb/March; they welcome our code (Evan) to improve it; and offered to do a joint development effort.
5/10/2003 - Saturday - Technical: Further product use in Layer3 switches and routers
Had a long discussion with Evan, as it turns out, we can fairly easily build cards/blades to go in most enterprise-level Layer3 switches and routers, thus implementing iSecure technology very broadly. The same concept applies for blade-built firewalls and such; similar to the VPN hardware accelerator cards. Will update this product development outlook to the Executive Summary and Business Plan.
5/9/2003 - Friday - Conference call with Storm Ventures
Held a 1-hour conference call with Tim Danford and Ryan Floyd - they have already looked in the dDoS space, know none of the solutions work, and remain skeptical that our does. They wanted to get the juice which of course we cannot give them; and asked for us to convince a Peter Lothberg (Tim was unable to spell the name for me) about iSecure as their due diligence. Contact Ruth and Vint Cerf to see who he is.
5/8/2003 - Thursday - Commerzbank permits quote of successful iSecure test
Thanks to the efforts of one of the 3G, Peter Kraemer, Global Head of IT at the bank, permits us to quote the successful iSecure test. This gives us a lot of credibility, and we shared it with all investor- and sales leads immediately. Commerzbank in comparison would be the #4 bank in the US.
Press release: www.meliorinc.com/html/press.html#Commerzbank
Testimonial: www.meliorinc.com/html/testimonials.html
5/7/2003 - Wednesday - Tons more activity - another night shift for everyone
Athena Ventures came back twice today with detailed questions, to which we responded. We now have a really good response to the most commonly asked questions, and they are available to collaborative use on the new Sales > FAQs page (ready to copy and paste if those questions come up in sales calls). Boni contacted Tippingpoints Vicky Irvin, who writes the SANS alerts every Monday - they should be in Dallas next week to review iSecure.
The tech team was busy all day into the late night dealing with customer issues, and finishing out the new LDAP production environment (something we can really show off - Evan can elaborate in detail). Also updated the competitive overview with additional products which we have to position against frequently, even though they cannot really be compared to iSecure (just to make everyones life easier).
5/7/2003 - Wednesday - Added plenty of information and several investor updates!
Customer list, Investor updates, submitted to three additonal sources. To-Dos:respond to Level 3 detail questions after conference call with VP of Security and Director of Network Architecture; add scheduling system; update PPT presentations and Technical Whitepaper (for Boni/Tippingpoint, VC/Ryan @ Storm Ventures, and Level 3) and place on the IntraNet to share with everyone
5/6/2003 - Tuesday - New resources added
more articles, among them in Sales > dDoS Articles: the CAIDA analysis on backscatter in 2001, showing an average of 4,000 dDoS attacks per week; in Sales > dDoS Resources: the Backscatter Video,
and in Sales > dDoS Overview: an animated dDoS attack overview (new sales staff training).
5/6/2003 - Tuesday - 3G responded to iSecure Tech question, ask for more info
sent e-mail to Boni to get the details; got response, fired off to 3G
5/6/2003 - Tuesday - Report: SCO web site knocked off the web on Friday
see reports in the Sales > dDoS articles section (PDF)
5/6/2003 - Tuesday - Conference Call with ISS
went well, Greg (Silicon Valley) from ISS sees value. He especially liked the Cloaking feature.
He will follow up internally, explain the various options on how ISS and Melior could work together.
We will follow up with Atlanta contacts next week.
5/5/2003 - Monday - Details on Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act
added on the Sales > dDoS Resources page
5/5/2003 - Monday - Evans Melior FIRE CD (Forensics Incident Response Environment)
may be published as such (greatly improved over the original) on SourceForge.net,
and become part of the 2nd most popular project on this geek/network security site.
With the final version completed, we will have it professionally reproduced by Duplium
(which made out DVD copies) - Matt requested quotes. Same disc which is sent to
Thompson Regulatory / West Laq (Dave Notch), who came to Dallas for a demo last week.
5/5/2003 - Monday - dDoS Articles
listed under Sales
5/5/2003 - Monday - more iSecure Technical background
added to the Tech Stuff section under iSecure
5/5/2003 - Monday - Investor Conference with Vicky Heller postponed to next week
5/5/2003 - Monday - No response yet from Germany re: iSecure UDP/Hammerhead
as of 1pm CST (or 8pm Germany time) --- following up.
5/5/2003 - Monday - added link to the Top 75 Security Tools
to the Tech Stuff page
5/5/2003 - Monday - updated the Sales leads after input from John & Matt
click on Sales
5/5/2003 - Monday - dDoS Telephony and IPSEC Vulnerabilities
Perfect timing for the investor talks due today (3 conference calls) - SANS published another serious of dDoS vulnerabilities and an IPSEC compromise this morning.
5/4/2003 - Sunday - Media Coverage:
Dallas Morning News publishes success story - I would have preferred a focus more on the company than me, but better that than not having the article. We did get a resume from a CSSIP certified Microsoft employee because of it.
5/4/2003 - Sunday - Cell Phones down:
Sprint PCS disconnected the corporate account. Cell phones are down until we pay the outstanding amount.
5/3/2003 - Saturday - iSecure Tests with Boni:
Tested with Boni using all kinds of tools on the live demo server. We found some issues to resolve (UDP filtering, some application-level dDoS attacks with valid packets) to be addressed. Contacted the 3G to get details.
5/3/2003 - Saturday - Sign relocated for Web Cam:
Changed location of sign at the data center, so it shows in the web cam picture.
5/2/2003 - Friday - HE threatens to shut down Fremont Co-Lo:
HE agreed not to shut down our co-lo servers as of late Friday, but to keep going to Monday. Working to convince them to give us a little more time to pay outstanding $1,600 bill.
5/2/2003 - Friday - Planet agrees to test iSecure:
Security guy at The Planet is willing to test iSecure in response to our proposal for a reference install at cost.
5/2/2003 - Friday - Exec Summary Update:
Updated the Executive Summary in preparation for Ruths VC Contact.
5/1/2003 - Thursday - Real Estate Outlook:
Bartow Harris from Equis provides overview of potential new office locations in downtown Dallas (after funding, of course). With current real estate market situation in downtown Dallas, we can get high-end (pretty) office space at great deals (standing out: Bank of America tower, 69th and 70th floor with private elevator in between, patio, as low as $13/sqf; with committment, we get one floor for free for 1 to2 years; also: top floor of the Chase Manhattan tower, comes with high-tech, custom furniture)
Download Powerpoint Presentation (~45 MB each): PPS or PPT
5/1/2003 - Thursday - Sales Progress:
1stLegal is very interested to host with us (consistent 2 Mbit/s stream) as well as CyberMill in St. Louis (20 Mbit/s stream). This may give us the opportunity to get into Equinix as our second and carrier-independent data center, as well as tie us into their IBX network and open us to their large banking customers, who are co-locating with Equinix.
4/30/2003 - Wednesday - Extended Pay for Planet Co-Lo:
COO Lance Crosby extends pay deadline for Meliors data center to Thursday, May 15th. $6k due.
4/27/2003 - Sunday - Data Center Migration complete:
over the weekend we migrated all services from HE in Fremont to The Planet in Dallas. Turned out to be painful, lots of lingering issues. Most resolved, some DNS cache updates pending.
4/27/2003 - Sunday - IntraNet & Log begins ...
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