TippingPoint, part of Trend Micro Security, is an American software company founded in 1999 with focus on network security products, particularly

intrusion prevention system 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 ...

s for networks.

History

The company was founded in January 1999 under the name Shbang! in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. Its co-founders were John F. McHale, Kent A. Savage (first chief executive), and Kenneth A. Kalinoski. Its business was to develop and sell Internet appliances. In May 1999, the company changed its name to Netpliance and in November they released the

I-Opener The i-Opener was a low-cost internet appliance produced by Netpliance (now known as TippingPoint) between 1999 and 2002. The hardware was sold as a loss leader for a monthly internet service. Because of the low cost of the hardware, it was popul ...

, a low-cost computer intended for browsing the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

. The hardware was sold at a loss, and costs were recouped through a subscription service plan. When the device was found to be easily modded to avoid the service plan, Netpliance changed the terms of sale to charge a termination fee. In 2001, the

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...

fined the company $100,000 for sales and billing practices. In 2002, the company discontinued operations of its internet appliance business and renamed itself TippingPoint. CEO Savage was replaced by chairman of the board McHale. McHale stepped down in 2004, but remained chairman of the board. The position was filled by Kip McClanahan, former CEO of BroadJump. In January 2005, TippingPoint was acquired by the network equipment company

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...

for $442 million, operating as a division of 3Com led by James Hamilton (TippingPoint President), later replaced by Alan Kessler. 3Com itself was subsequently acquired by computer manufacturer

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

in April 2010 for approximately $2.7 billion. On Oct 21, 2015, TippingPoint was acquired by

Trend Micro is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security software company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and Irving, Texas, United State.Other regional headquarters and R&D centers are located around East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and ...

for approximately $300 million.

Technology

The TippingPoint NGIPS is an network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) deals with IT threat protection. It combines application-level security with user awareness and inbound/outbound messaging inspection capabilities, to protect the user's

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematic ...

, and

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

from threats. In September 2013, HP announced that it entered the next-generation firewall market with a new line of TippingPoint firewalls. The line extends TippingPoint's existing IPS appliances with traditional stateful packet filtering and application control.http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/22 40205649/HP-launches-Tipping-Point-firewall-with-next-generation-app-control

References

;Notes * * http://www.crn.com/news/security/300078537/trend-micro-to-acquire-hp-tippingpoint-for-300m.htm

External links

TippingPoint Website

SEC search on netpliance
{{DEFAULTSORT:TippingPoint American companies established in 1999 Companies based in Austin, Texas Database security Hewlett-Packard acquisitions HP software Static program analysis tools Software companies based in California Companies established in 2003 Software companies of the United States