The U.S. Military’s Favorite Cyber Platform

Old-school firewalls and antivirus software try to block or at least detect hackers, but when those systems fail, they can’t do much to limit the trail of destruction. More often than you might think, corporate IT staffers are reduced to wandering around to physically tinker with infected machines to figure out the problem. And the most advanced security software can be undone by the dumbest of human errors. Equifax Inc. blamed the hack of 145 million Social Security numbers on an unnamed IT guy failing to install a security update.

Even the U.S. Department of Defense has proved vulnerable to hackers, who are still making use of the National Security Agency cyberweapons that began leaking online last year. In the military, the gap between developer and user can be more profound, says Nate Fick, the chief executive officer of security-software maker Endgame Inc., which has built its business on Pentagon contracts. “When it comes down to the individual, you’re dealing with a 19- or 20-year-old operator on a 12- to 18-month duty rotation,” says Fick, a former U.S. Marine Corps commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You better build a product that’s easy to use.”