Bangalore-based nSecure Software has designed and developed India’s first intrusion detection product called nPatrol. Vipul A Sheth, director, nSecure Software, says, “We decided to develop an intrusion detection system product two years back and the development work took us a year.” Banks, financial institutions and telecom companies are putting their network infrastructure in place and they need an IDS product to monitor their networks. nPatrol offers a multilayer approach for intrusion detection and the defence is based on protocol and log analysis, policy-based detection, signature based analysis, anomaly detection and an integrity check. nPatrol is priced at Rs 2.5 lakh per agent and the company claims it has the highest number of signatures for any such product 1,250 signatures in all.

Over the last nine months there have been 45 installations of a patrol in India and eight abroad. “We have two installations in Singapore, one each in the Middle East and Europe and four in the US,” says Sheth. In India, customers include defence (DRDO), government, banks, financial institutions and software development houses.

The company’s strategy will be to expand market penetration through alliances with leading system integrators. Talks are on for marketing alliances with SIs. Recently, the company formed a partnership with Global eSecure and appointed a Mumbai-based system integrator, MIEL, as its SI partner. “We are targeting 150 installations in India and overseas by the end of 2002,” says Sheth. nSecure’s plans include opening an office in Europe by Q4 2002.

nSecure has received

Rs 1.5 crore from an angel investor for enhancing its product and for support activities. The company has earned Rs 1.22 crore by way of revenues in the last nine months. “We will be investing 50 percent of our revenues back into product R&D and promotion,” says Sheth.