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Company History
Mark Shavlik founded Shavlik Technologies in 1993 to offer a unique, market-driven approach to security application design and development. Shavlik was a senior developer for Microsoft Corporation, and one of the founding members of the Microsoft Windows NT® team. Shavlik initially created a security consulting business that brought attention to the importance of securing businesses through a third-party analysis of current corporate security policies and procedures and devising plans and solutions to help companies protect themselves from computer exploits. One of the primary vulnerabilities Shavlik continuously found were security patches, mis-configured systems, and poorly managed administrator accounts and passwords. All of which continue to represent the largest vulnerabilities to most organizations today. Shavlik Technologies' first product, called InspectorScan, was created to address these problems. InspectorScan was widely used by banks and security consultants, including those at the Big 4, and was also licensed by Secure Computing Corp. for distribution to its customers. InspectorScan was eventually sold to FoundStone where Mark Shavlik became an investor, and then Foundstone was later sold to McAfee, Inc. In 1999, Shavlik Technologies developed the "Hot Fix Network Checker" patch manager for Microsoft Corporation, which was based on a new version of InspectorScan and key members of the Microsoft Security Team knew and liked. This new technology, called HFNetChk, is the engine used by the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) and SMS, and is now the underlying technology for Shavlik's NetChk Compliance solution. Shavlik retained the rights to the HFNetChk IP and then launched its own flagship product, Shavlik HFNetChkPro™ in 2001, to provide complete patch management, which included remediation as well as patch scanning. Analysts and IT Administrators soon began referring to patch management as a separate IT function within the computer security arena. Today, patch management is considered one of the best lines of defense to keep network systems from being attacked or exploited by malicious software. In 2003 Shavlik Technologies founded PatchManagement.org mailing list, the industry's first discussion list dedicated to discussing security patch management topics. This list discusses the how-to's and why's of security patch management across a broad spectrum of Operating Systems, Applications, and Network Devices. Shavlik Technologies' own Chief Security Architect, Eric Schultze, is a primary moderator and frequent contributor to PatchManagement.org. In 2004, Shavlik recognized an industry trend toward broad security suite offerings by the largest security vendors. So the company launched an aggressive business development strategy to license its widely accepted patch management technology to other leading security vendors interested in bundling the capability into their existing offerings. Today more than 20 leading security companies such as IBM, BMC, Symantec and iPass license technology from Shavlik. By 2006, Shavlik Technologies had enlarged its customer base to over 7,000 organizations worldwide. Many of these customers were either medium sized businesses or single departments in larger organizations. In order to better leverage its existing customer base and provide these customers with additional solutions, Shavlik released two enterprise level products in 2006, Shavlik NetChk Protect and Shavlik NetChk Compliance. NetChk Protect is built upon Shavlik's HFNetChkPro technology and provides an enterprise-ready solution that simplifies the management of critical security patches, spyware, malware and unwanted applications from a single, simple-to-use console. NetChk Compliance simplifies policy management by automating the security configuration process and mapping configuration baselines back to policies, regulations, and best practices - ensuring IT audit readiness. In January of 2007, Shavlik finalized an agreement to acquire all rights to the UpdateEXPERT® product line from St. Bernard Software. Under the agreement Shavlik assumed full responsibility for service and support for all existing UpdateEXPERT customers and products. This acquisition grew Shavlik's customer base to over 10,000 organizations worldwide. And based on IDC's 2006 Worldwide Security and Vulnerability Management Software report, the UpdateEXPERT acquisition established Shavlik Technologies as the industry's leading "Patch and Remediation" vendor. In April 2007 Microsoft selected Shavlik to provide a solution to its customers to complement MBSA and support those older Microsoft solutions no longer supported by MBSA. As a result, Shavlik launched NetChk Limited that scans for all patches that Microsoft can't scan for and also provides tighter integration with MBSA so that customers can input NetChk Limited results and view them directly from the MBSA console. "Shavlik Technologies was an easy choice for Microsoft to go to for providing continuity in supporting the complete detection for customers who are using some of the older products," said Stephen Toulouse, Group Program Manager at Microsoft. "Shavlik has an intimate knowledge of security detection requirements since they helped develop the first version of MBSA for Microsoft." |
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