FileTrek Survey Reveals That Black Hat Attendees' Opinions Split On Snowden

PRESS RELEASE

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FileTrek, a leading provider of security solutions that protect intellectual property within organizations by using behavioral analytics, conducted a volunteer poll among attendees at . When given the choice between hero or villain, the results found that exactly 50% of the voters believed Edward Snowden, the American who leaked details of several top-secret mass surveillance programs to the press, is a hero while 50% believed he is villain.

The Black Hat USA conference is attended by sophisticated hackers, security experts and leaders from all areas of the infosec community including corporate, government, academic, and researchers. The conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada at Caesars Palace from July 27 – August 1, 2013. General Keith Alexander, the Director of the National Security Agency, gave the keynote address and over 6,500 delegates attended sessions ranging from malware, mobile, defense, and security.

"At the Black Hat Conference known for the leading cyber security experts, the decision for whether Snowden was a hero or villain was an absolute tie. The cyber community was split between the requirement to protect sensitive information and the challenge of disclosing what people thought was morally right or wrong," said Mark Bennett, FileTrek VP of Sales.

FileTrek delivers a comprehensive solution for companies that require insight to internal threats such as policy violations, suspicious endpoint activity, misuse of unstructured data, risky user behavior of resources, and malware propagation. "If FileTrek had been in place when Edward Snowden leaked NSA data, they would have known what he had taken and where he had leaked it to using Behavioral Analytics," said Dale Quayle, FileTrek CEO. The new security approach introduced by FileTrek at Black Hat would have prevented the PRISM leaks as the solution collects metadata, and then analyzes reports on files and user activity. If the NSA had used FileTrek's solution, Snowden would still be in America rather than residing in Russia."

About FileTrek:

FileTrek is privately held with offices in Ottawa, Canada and Los Angeles, California. FileTrek is a software provider of early warning and forensic solutions that identifies users who do not comply with security policy and people of interest based on a real-time accounting of the events that occur at the endpoint. For more information, please visit www.filetrek.com.