IID, previously Internet Identity, was a privately held

Internet security Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules ...

company based in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...

, United States. IID was acquired in an all-cash transaction by

Infoblox Infoblox, formerly (NYSE:BLOX), is a privately held IT automation and security company based in California's Silicon Valley. The company focuses on managing and identifying devices connected to networks—specifically for the Domain Name System ...

on February 8, 2016. It primarily provides cyberthreat data, a platform to exchange cyberthreat data, and anti-

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwa ...

, malware and domain control security services to

US federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fed ...

agencies,

financial service Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, ...

firms, and

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

ing and

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

(ISP) companies.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

uses IID as a data feed for its anti-phishing software as well as a partner in their Domain Defense Program. Other customers include

BECU BECU is a credit union originally established to serve employees of Boeing, The Boeing Company. BECU was founded as Fellowship Credit Union in 1935 by 18 Boeing employees, and was named Boeing Employees' Credit Union for much of its history. It ...

(Boeing Employees’ Credit Union), Monster.com and Yakima Valley Credit Union.

History

IID was founded in 1996 providing outsourced domain management services. In 1997, the company claims to have discovered and disabled one of the earliest phishing attacks. Since then, IID’s business has revolved around protecting companies against cyber attacks. In 2013, IID accepted its first round of institutional funding for $8 million from Bessemer Venture Partners. IID was acquired in an all-cash transaction by Infoblox on February 8, 2016.

Products and services

ActiveTrust

ActiveTrust is IID’s Threat Intelligence Management System. The company claims it gets threat data from thousands of sources, and determines what data is useful to defend against cyberattacks. ActiveTrust feeds this data into Fortune 500 companies’ and U.S. government agencies’ cybersecurity appliances, leading IID to claim that ActiveTrust is the world’s largest commercial cyberthreat data exchange.

ActiveTrust Data

Provides a list of the latest malicious (or compromised)

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es, domains and

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

accounts, and identifies those "bad players" the organization is connected to through its extended enterprise. ActiveTrust Data was formerly known as "ActiveKnowledge."

Threat Intelligence

IID’s Threat Intelligence team investigates, analyzes and validates threat data to identify patterns and trends, revealing ongoing attacks and future hazards. The TI team takes shared data from ActiveTrust and uses filtering and analysis to add structure and context.

DNS Services

Detects, diagnoses and mitigates DNS (Domain Name System) security and configuration issues for an organization and its Extended Enterprise. This tool reportedly helped IID identify the

DNS hijacking DNS hijacking, DNS poisoning, or DNS redirection is the practice of subverting the resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. This can be achieved by malware that overrides a computer's TCP/IP configuration to point at a rogue DNS server unde ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

in December 2009. It also reportedly helped find that half of all Fortune 500 companies were infected with

DNSChanger DNSChanger is a DNS hijacking Trojan. The work of an Estonian company known as Rove Digital, the malware-infected computers by modifying a computer's DNS entries to point toward its own rogue name servers, which then injected its own advertising ...

Mitigation

Provides anti-phishing and malware security solutions that help organizations ensure that online brands are trusted. Mitigation was formerly known as "ActiveControl" and "Power Shark."

Industry partnerships

IID holds leadership positions in various security industry groups including with the

Anti-Phishing Working Group The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an international consortium that attempts to eliminate fraud and identity theft caused by phishing and related incidents It brings together businesses affected by phishing attacks: security products and ...

(APWG),

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

(ICANN) and Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG).

References

External links

*
IID customers and partners

Microsoft's Anti-Phishing Partners page

Internet Identity's ICANNWiki page

{{DEFAULTSORT:Internet Identity Software companies established in 1996 Defunct companies based in Tacoma, Washington Computer security companies 2016 mergers and acquisitions