West Lafayette, Indiana - The recent distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that caused website outages for Twitter, Reddit, Spotify and many more companies, has left the population wondering if they can expect another attack and what organizations can do to prepare.
SensorHound Inc., a Purdue-based startup, develops software products that could increase the reliability and security of the embedded software that drives IoT devices and thus protect them from being used in attacks, known as DDoS. The company also provides products and services that reduce developmental and operational costs for large networked systems of internet-connected devices.
DDoS is a type of denial of service attack where multiple compromised devices, often infected with a Trojan, are used to target a single website, causing it to crash. Victims of a DDoS attack consist of both the end-targeted system and all devices maliciously used and controlled by the hacker in the distributed attack. In recent outages, attackers exploited the vulnerable IoT devices, such as internet-connected webcams and DVRs, to orchestrate some of the biggest DDoS attacks known so far, the company said.
Vinai Sundaram, co-founder and CEO of SensorHound, said the company has developed "vertical-agnostic operations monitoring solutions and a secure data communication stack" for Internet of Things devices.
"Our Hound Solution™ software constantly monitors these small but critical devices to proactively detect threats and automatically send alerts with detailed diagnostic data to IoT device OEMs and solution providers. It continuously tracks the health of deployed IoT devices and achieves a level of visibility previously possible only in a laboratory setting at an unbelievably tiny footprint," he said. "Tracking the health of IoT edge devices continuously allows early detection and quick resolution of operational bugs and threats, thus, significantly reducing their impact both in terms of physical damage and costs."
SensorHound has also developed a complementary product to protect the data being sent to and from IoT devices. Its MARS™ communication stack enables users to connect their IoT devices and gateways to their cloud databases without having to worry about security, reliability or scalability issues.
The technology has been licensed through the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization. More than 20 startups based on Purdue intellectual property were launched in the 2014 fiscal year. A video about SensorHound is available at
.About SensorHound, Inc.
SensorHound™ offers Internet of Things specific software products and services that significantly reduce development and operational costs of the IoT. Our solutions are based on award-winning and patent-pending technology developed over a decade by leading IoT researchers.
