Pikewerks Corporation is an intrinsically focused woman-owned small business specializing in cyber security, software protection, anti-tamper, information operations, data protection, and forensics. The company formed in 2003 and is built on the commitment to undertake the hardest problems and apply creativity and innovation to push the limits of technology. Developers at Pikewerks are skilled experts who have taken technology from concept to deployment. The leadership is highly technical and maintains its focus on innovation. Headquartered in the Huntsville, AL metro area, Pikewerks Corporation serves the federal government, research organizations, and critical industry partners.
Sandy Ring is the founder and President of Pikewerks Corporation. Prior to devoting her full attention to Pikewerks, Ms. Ring served in a variety of technical and management positions including the Deputy Director of Research at the Advanced Technology Research Center (ATRC) of The Sytex Group, Incorporated and was a researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center.
Imaginative Solutions to Hard Problems
Pikewerks Corporation specializes in advanced research, development, training, and consulting across a range of information security topics. The following are several critical areas of focus:
Insider Threat
Insider threat is causing significant monetary loss across both commercial and government organizations. All of our current security measures have been developed and aimed at combating the external threat: hackers breaking in across the Internet. Since the insider threat is a "silent threat" most organizations are not even aware that it is happening to them until it is too late. Organizations of all sizes have lost millions of dollars and have not even realized that it occurred. Detection and remediation of insider damage will be one of the toughest challenges we face over the next several decades.
Software Protection
Software protection measures developed by Pikewerks are designed to safeguard both the integrity and intellectual property of applications that are relied on and trusted by organizations. Hundreds of development hours are dedicated to the creation of proprietary algorithms that if left exposed can end up in the hands of competitors, or worse, those with malicious intent. Electronic Armor® is a software tool that protects executables from unauthorized access, reverse engineering, and signature detection. Beyond static protection on disk, this software utilizes a just-in-time decryption technique to ensure that instructions are exposed only as they are executed (not before or after) and that pages are locked from all access during execution. This solution is also being integrated with several hardware anti-tamper measures to further increase its effectiveness in hostile environments.
Forensics
Responses between intrusion detection, forensics collection, and remediation must be made in real-time to accurately assess and combat an attacker. Second LookTM is a software capability designed for live, in-memory, forensic analysis of an operating system and its running processes. As threats to computer systems continue to increase in sophistication, traditional post-mortem forensics analysis is no longer sufficient. Advanced exploits allow for the implantation of rootkits and backdoors directly into memory, without ever having an actual file on disk. Second LookTM, was developed to combat the increasingly sophisticated threat from advanced malware, using unique techniques to detect, examine, and clean most invasive software.