By Monte Robertson, Software Security Solutions

Luca Technologies Inc. develops biotechnology-driven solutions designed to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources. The Golden, Colorado-based company is leveraging the ability of naturally occurring microorganisms to convert domestic oil, shale and coal resources into the natural gas methane to create a sustainable alternative to mining and drilling.

Luca Technologies has coined the term “geobioreactor” to refer to the large underground sites where this natural methane biogeneration occurs, to differentiate them from the surface bioreactors where human engineered conversion of plant materials into ethanol, diesel or methane is currently performed at small scale.

Luca’s founders hypothesized that it might be possible to manage active geobioreactors as well as induce functional methane production in many of those geobioreactors not currently active, with a goal of cultivating methane production on a sustainable, commercially viable scale. By doing so, Luca Technologies would enable, for the first time, the active, sustainable cultivation of methane.

Since its founding in the late 1990s, the company has focused all its efforts on developing its core technology; network infrastructure and security had not been a focus.

When IT manager Kyle Kowalski joined the company in 2005, he found little formal network security on Luca Technologies’ 20-plus desktops and servers, “except for various antivirus products people had put on individual machines,” Kowalski remembers. “There was no protection against spyware or any other non-viral malicious code. Users had the rights to install anything they wanted—and they did.”

Complicating matters was the fact that Luca was split into two offices: a 10-person site in Golden running on a Linux server and another 10-person site 15 miles away in Denver running on a Microsoft Workgroup server. An IT consultant had been holding the spread-out network together as well as he could but security had been ignored as the company ramped up its core business.

“Our database was going off-line at least once a week,” Kowalski says, “and client machines were up and running only 70 to 80 percent of the time. It was clear we needed to switch strategies.”

The first step was standardizing on a layered security approach. The main firewall and the first layer had been purchased from Software Security Solutions (SSS), so Kowalski turned to the Lakewood, Colorado-based company to help him build “the next layer of defense,” he says.

SSS, a Security Value Added Reseller (VAR), was happy to help Luca formulate a comprehensive plan to start securing and stabilizing its network. SSS’s first recommendation was to remove the ad-hoc collection of “name-brand” antivirus programs from the desktops and install ESET’s NOD32. The antivirus product uses a heuristics-based engine that enables proactive detection of viruses not detected by signature-based products. As an additional security layer, SSS suggested installing Webroot’s Spy Sweeper anti-spyware program.

Kowalski cleared all the machines, sometimes having to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and installed NOD32 and Spy Sweeper on each one individually. Six months later, when Luca consolidated its offices—and networks—in Golden, he upgraded to network versions of both products.

Next Kowalski tackled spam. As the company grew, Luca executives starting getting “a horrendous” amount of spam, he recalls. “People were receiving upward of 100 spam messages a day each.” SSS offered one type of anti-spam software to test, but according to Kowalski, “it worked but wasn't ideal.” He next tried SonicWALL’s Email Security, also offered by SSS, which turned out to be a perfect solution. “It takes less time to configure than the other solutions I’ve tried, and has a 99-plus percent success rate, with a near zero rate of false positives,” he says.

Although the majority of Luca employees work in Golden, the company also has two field offices in Wyoming that send data back to the corporate office. To ensure the integrity of that data, Kowalski installed a SonicWALL firewall at each field office, along with a SonicWALL VPN to provide a secure link between all the sites. “We’ve automated the field data feed, but we have to make sure that automation doesn't fail,” he says. “If the data feed transfer doesn’t happen, we can't analyze the new inputs. It's really convenient that we can now focus on making sure the data transfer is good, without worrying about the security of the data transfer.”

Securing the company’s network hasn’t broken the bank, either. According to Kowalski, “Luca pays less than $5,000 per year for a complete layered security solution.”

Kowalski is glad he decided to stay with SSS for both its security expertise and customer service. “I have one-stop shopping,” he says. “Every time I've had an issue—and there haven't been as many as early on—I always know I can give them a call, and they are always able to provide the support I need.”

Ensuring that multiple pieces of hardware and a variety of software packages work well together can be challenging, but SSS has always come through, Kowalski says. “Any time I've had problem with a product or appliance, I've been able to contact Software Security Solutions. If they don't have an immediate answer, they’ll help me find one, or at least point me in the right direction. On the few occasions when they weren’t directly able to help, they put me in contact with the vendor,” Kowalski says. “Service like that is really unbeatable.”

In the three years since implementing layered security, Luca has grown from 20 to 55 employees, but the network hasn’t suffered at all. “We have been sitting pretty,” Kowalski says. He’s only had to rebuild three machines in the past year and a half, after the tedious work of rebuilding the original 20. And all the problems have been hardware related—failing hard drives, overheated power supplies, etc.—not security issues.

“These layered defenses that Software Security Solutions has helped us put together have made the ‘securing-the-network’ part of my job incredibly easy,” Kowalski says. He also helps employees with their home computers, but says they are always in much worse shape than their work PCs. “One of the folks here brought in their personal machine. It was so badly infested with spyware nothing could be done, so I had to wipe it. The only thing we get on our networked PCs now is the occasional errant cookie.”

Software Security Solutions is a Colorado-based technology company founded in 2001. By focusing on computer security threats and continually researching and testing a wide range of offerings, the firm is able to provide guidance and insight to business operations that are unable to staff a security team on their own. SSS advocates a layered approach to security and offers a range of best-in-class solutions that can be integrated into a layered security framework.

Monte Robertson is CEO for Software Security Solutions.