Tripwire, Inc. is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company based in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, that focuses on security and compliance automation. It is a subsidiary of technology company

Fortra Fortra is an American cybersecurity company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The company was founded as Help/38 in 1982, rebranded as HelpSystems in 1988, and became Fortra in 2022. Fortra is owned by private equity firms TA Associates, Harvest ...

History

Tripwire's

intrusion detection An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically either reported to an administrator or collec ...

software was created in the 1990s by

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

graduate student Gene Kim and his professor

Gene Spafford Eugene Howard Spafford (born 1956), known as Spaf, is an American distinguished professor of computer science at Purdue University and a computer security expert. Spafford serves as an advisor to U.S. government agencies and corporations. In 19 ...

. In 1997, Gene Kim co-founded Tripwire, Inc. with rights to the Tripwire name and technology, and produced a commercial version, Tripwire for Servers. In 2000, Tripwire released

Open Source Tripwire Open Source Tripwire is a free software security and data integrity tool for monitoring and alerting on specific file change(s) on a range of systems originally developed by Eugene H. Spafford and Gene Kim. The project is based on code origina ...

. In 2005, the firm released Tripwire Enterprise, a product for configuration control by detecting, assessing, reporting and remediating file and configuration changes. In January 2010, it announced the release of Tripwire Log Center, a log and security information and event management (SIEM) software that stores, correlates and reports log and security event data. The two products can be integrated to enable correlation of change and event data. August 21, 2009, the firm acquired Activeworx technologies from CrossTec Corporation. Revenues grew to $74 million in 2009. In October 2009, the company had 261 employees; that number grew to 336 by June 2010. By May–June 2010, the company had over 5,500 customers and had announced that it had filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

of its common stock. A year later, the company announced its sale to the

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

firm

Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP is an American private equity and growth capital firm based in Chicago, Illinois. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring enterprise software companies and has over $130billion in assets under management . It ...

, ending its $86 million IPO plans. CEO Jim Johnson cited the firm's failure to reach the $100 million revenue milestone in 2010 as well as changing IPO market expectations as reasons for not going through with the IPO. The day following the acquisition, the company laid off about 50 of its 350 employees. Tripwire acquired nCircle, which focused on asset discovery and vulnerability management, in 2013. In December 2014, Belden announced plans to buy Tripwire for $710 million. The acquisition was completed on January 2, 2015. In February 2022, Belden announced to sell Tripwire to HelpSystems (HelpSystems was renamed Fortra later that year).

References

{{reflist, 2 Companies based in Portland, Oregon Computer security software companies Software companies based in Oregon Software companies established in 1997 Privately held companies based in Oregon 1997 establishments in Oregon 2015 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States