Tripwire, Inc. is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company based in

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

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

History

Tripwire's

intrusion detection An intrusion detection system (IDS; also intrusion prevention system or IPS) 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 rep ...

software was created in the 1990s by

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

graduate student Gene Kim and his professor

Gene Spafford Eugene Howard Spafford (born 1956), known as Spaf, is an American 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 1998, he founded ...

. 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. The project is based on code originally contributed by Tripwire, Inc. in 2000. See also * ...

. 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 investment ...

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

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

firm

Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP, is an American private equity and growth capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring software companies and has over $114 billion in assets under manage ...

, 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.

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