An early Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)

In an earlier blog post, Before there was Mandiant there was WheelGroup, I mentioned WheelGroup wanted to be the ADT of the Internet. Part of that effort included licensing WheelGroup intrusion detection technology to what was hoped to be a growing Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) market, and I think their first partner was NetSolve (which, like WheelGroup, would be acquired by Cisco).

NetSolve's marketing material for their ProWatch Secure service in 1996 promoted a 24x7 service centered around

• Prevention of problems before they occur
• Detection of attempted break-ins in real time
• Response to unauthorized or suspicious activities

Prevent-Detect-Response is commonplace now, but as a cyber security business, this was still the very early days. Here is one of NetSolve's slick sheets from 1996 promoting their ProWatch Secure MSS. Take a look at it to see what MSS was like 19 years ago.