Sanctum Inc.

Last updated
Sanctum Inc.
Company type Private company
Industry Software and information technology
PredecessorPerfecto Technologies
Founded1997
Founder Gili Raanan and Eran Reshef
Defunct2006
FateAcquired by IBM
Headquarters Herzliya, Israel,
Santa Clara, California;
Products AppShield and AppScan
Website www.sanctuminc.com (archived)

Sanctum Inc. was a Santa Clara, California-based information technology company focused on application security. Sanctum offered a firewall, AppShield, and scanner, AppScan, for application-layer security for Web environments. [1]

Contents

In 2004 Sanctum was merged with Watchfire and the company was subsequently acquired by IBM. [2] [3]

History

Sanctum was founded in 1997 as Perfecto Technologies, by Eran Reshef and Gili Raanan.

The company released its first product AppShield in summer of 1999. [4]

The company has done an extensive research in application security and applying formal methods to real life software [5] in collaboration with Turing Award winner Professor Amir Penueli. Early research in 1996 and 1997 led to the invention, in parallel to other teams, of CAPTCHA technology, and the application for a US patent for CAPTCHA. [6]

In 2000 the company renamed itself to Sanctum. [7] The company was backed by investors Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, DLJ, Walden and Mofet. [8]

In 2004, Watchfire acquired Sanctum for an undisclosed amount. [3] In 2007, Watchfire was acquired by IBM. [9] [10]

Products

The AppShield product was an early Web application Firewall. [11] AppShield was conceptualized by Eran Reshef and Gili Raanan and was introduced to the market in 1999. [12] AppShield worked by inspecting incoming HTTP requests and blocking malicious attacks based on a dynamic policy which was composed by analyzing the outgoing HTML pages. [13] [14] [15] A 2002 ZDNet article noted that in the three years following its launch, it had been used by 60 Fortune 100 companies. [16] Watchfire acquired Sanctum in 2004, and subsequently sold the intellectual property for AppShield to F5 Networks, which discontinued the product in favor of its competing TrafficShield product. [17]

In June 2000 the company introduced AppScan the world's first Web Security Vulnerability Assessment solution. [18] Among the first clients for AppScan were Yahoo!, [19] Bank of America and AT&T. [20]

References

  1. ↑ "What the Watchfire-Sanctum acquisition means for Web app security". Archived from the original on 2017-10-22. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  2. ↑ "IBM Buys Watchfire". PCWorld. 2007-06-06. Archived from the original on 2016-09-27. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  3. 1 2 Kawamoto, Dawn (26 July 2004). "Watchfire acquires Sanctum". ZDNET. Retrieved 2026-01-20.
  4. ↑ Messmer, Ellen. "CNN - New tool blocks wily e-comm hacker tricks - September 7, 1999". CNN. Archived from the original on May 8, 2001. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  5. ↑ Kesten, Yonit; Klein, Amit; Pnueli, Amir; Raanan, Gil (1999-09-20). Wing, Jeannette M.; Woodcock, Jim; Davies, Jim (eds.). FM'99 — Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp.  173–194. doi:10.1007/3-540-48119-2_12. ISBN   9783540665878. S2CID   41193257.
  6. ↑ US20050114705A1,Reshef, Eran; Raanan, Gil& Solan, Eilon,"Method and system for discriminating a human action from a computerized action",issued 2005-05-26
  7. ↑ "Perfecto Changes Name to Sanctum - Globes English". Globes. 21 June 2000. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  8. ↑ "DLJ'S Sprout Group Leads $16 Million Investment in Perfecto Technologies; Premier Venture Firm Backs eBusiness Security Software Company. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 2016-09-12.[ permanent dead link ]
  9. ↑ Dignan, Larry (5 June 2007). "IBM buys Watchfire; collects another security firm". ZDNET. Retrieved 2026-01-20.
  10. ↑ "IBM Acquires Security Vendor Watchfire". Archived from the original on 2025-02-12. Retrieved 2026-01-20.
  11. ↑ "Sanctum's AppShield". Network World. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  12. ↑ "Perfecto Technologies Delivers AppShield for E-Business - InternetNews". www.internetnews.com. 27 August 1999. Archived from the original on 2016-04-21. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  13. ↑ Messmer, Ellen. "CNN - New tool blocks wily e-comm hacker tricks - September 7, 1999". www.cnn.com. Archived from the original on April 11, 2000. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  14. ↑ "Method and system for dynamic refinement of security policies". Google Patents . 2002-12-31.
  15. ↑ "Method and system for extracting application protocol characteristics". Google Patents . 1999-07-01.
  16. ↑ "You need more than a firewall to stop hackers". ZDNET. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  17. ↑ "Game Over? - Information Security Magazine". Archived from the original on 2014-12-15. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  18. ↑ "Sanctum Introduces AppScan: Industry's First Automated Web Application Security Audit Tool. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 2016-09-12.[ permanent dead link ]
  19. ↑ Network World. IDG Network World Inc. 2000-06-19.
  20. ↑ "Sanctum, Inc. cited as leader in key web security sector". 5 August 2002. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
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