CodeArmor Pads Vi Labs' Anti-Piracy Offering

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By Jennifer deJong

August 20, 2008 — Software and application protection company Vi Labs has created an anti-piracy product that adds piracy threat detection and data reporting on infringements to applications.

CodeArmor Intelligence, released today, is a threat detection and reporting product that is a piece of Vi Labs’ CodeArmor security platform. Using its reporting capabilities, it can communicate an infringement to multiple Web gateway servers within an ISV’s facility, according to the company. Data from piracy or tampering can then be integrated into Salesforce.com to allow users to view a piracy lead dashboard.

The Web gateway can then be used to integrate infringement data into an internal customer relationship management system. CodeArmor Intelligence gathers information on who’s using the pirated software and when it’s being used.

“The software organization that’s developing the application would take our product and integrate it into their software, and there’s intelligence to detect when the application’s being tampered with or a threat has occurred to that application,” said Vic DeMarines, vice president of products at Vi Labs. “Once the software has been used or tampered with, we activate our reporting capabilities and collect specific data about the network and the application itself. We then communicate that information to a component that resides within the software vendor’s network, and that gets transformed into Salesforce.com.”

Infringement data from the product can be used to create a lead that can be followed up by a company’s legal or sales team. Additionally, a company can use these leads and enlist legal services organizations like the Software Industry and Information Association or the Business Software Alliance to act on them.

CodeArmor Intelligence has integration with Salesforce because the SaaS platform is a Web interface, and there’s no infrastructure required. “We found that not having to build your own server and own reporting functionality really made it an easy system to work with,” DeMarines said of Salesforce.

Vi Labs executives also said that ISV’s mainly rely on licensing or activation approaches to gather data, which can be easily bypassed or disabled by piracy groups or individuals. Such licensing or activation approaches can lack filters and reporting schemes for collected data, the company claimed. The company also claimed that CodeArmor Intelligence’s detection and reporting capabilities, along with its integration with Salesforce makes such problems irrelevant.

DeMarines said that Vi Labs has seen a lot of demand in anti-piracy products in countries like China, Russia and Vietnam, and among businesses that have what he called “high-value” software applications like electronic design automation and computer aided design applications.

“High-value software, or software that’s used to build products, is a big target for piracy groups,” DeMarines said. “CodeArmor Intelligence gives us another dimension in terms of software protection and anti-piracy.”

Related Search Term(s): security, Vi Labs

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