Students, alumni show entrepreneurial spirit
Brad Dixon
College of Management
Companies’ high-speed computer networks could
soon be much safer from attack, thanks to technology
developed by Intrinsic Security, winner of Georgia Tech
College of Management’s 2006
Business Plan Competition.
Most security products in use today only sample a small
fraction of the data streaming across high-speed networks,
explains MBA student Aldor Delp, CEO of Intrinsic Security.
But his company has developed an efficient means of
examining every single bit of data so that no attacks,
including network-vulnerability scans and worms, slip
past the system.
“It’s a totally different way of looking
at security,” says Delp, noting that previous
methods of examining all network data have proven too
cost-and-time prohibitive to implement. “Our company
provides the first proven solution for network monitoring
at speeds over one gigabit per second, which allows
for a nearly 100-percent accurate, real-time response
to threats and significantly lower hardware requirements
than anything else currently on the market.”
Delp shared the $10,000 prize for best overall business
plan with fellow MBA students Robert Henebry and Jozef
Purdes; Chris Clark, a doctoral student in electrical
and computer engineering at Tech; and Abhishek Kumar,
who earned his doctorate in computer science in December.
Intrinsic Security also edged out the competition’s
four other finalists to win the Most Fundable prize
(a package of legal, financial and other services),
which goes to the team considered most ready to enter
the marketplace by the judges.
The Business Plan Competition, started in 2001 and
open to all Georgia Tech students and alumni who’ve
graduated within the past five years, is intended primarily
as an educational exercise, but it often leads to the
creation of real technology-based businesses.
All of Intrinsic Security’s officers plan to
commit themselves fully to the company after graduation
and hope to bring their product to market by the fall.
They’re marketing their innovation, which is now
in beta-testing on the Georgia Tech network, to large
companies with high-speed networks.
Intrinsic Security grew out of the Technological
Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER)
program — a partnership between Georgia Tech and
Emory Law School that joins science and engineering
students with MBA, economics and law students, who collaborate
on projects while learning how to move technologies
from the lab to the marketplace.
Other teams honored
Two other TI:GER teams placed second and third in the
overall Business Plan Competition. EvIslet (pronounced
“e-violet”), a research-and-development
company for medical devices, won $3,000 for its plan
to market an innovation improving the success of islet-cell
transplantations used to treat diabetes.
Third-place winner PolyDerm Delivery Systems claimed
$2,000 for its plan for a drug-delivery skin patch employing
polymer microneedle technology. The company also won
two $500 prizes given for the first time this year:
the Sustainability Award, given to the plan that best
addresses environmental concerns and/or demonstrates
social responsibility; and the Showstopper Award, honoring
the team that did the best job selling itself to judges
in a tradeshow held the night before.
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