The company has developed a quartet of desktop asset-management and security modules that together will handle auto-discovery of hardware and software assets, assess vulnerabilities across networked systems, apply patches to those systems, and remotely manage PC and other access devices. In combination, the systems are sold as allowing a scan, click and fix routine for secure desktop management.
Vulnerabilty assessment alone is not enough, there is always a need to patch. And with one click, our systems can deploy a patch across a network, said CEO Marc Vaillant. We have four solutions in one, but they also stand alone. The company competes against the likes of McAfee’s Foundstone, and also larger systems houses such as Altiris and LANdesk.
Criston, which has had $15m invested to date and used to trade as Metrix Systems, is said to have a headcount of 50, some 40 channel partners, and sales of around $6.5m.
Its flagship Criston Precision product is agent-based technology that has been developed for autonomic PC control and, come September, PDA and mobile device management. The system integrates with the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console and provides various software distrbution features. In May 2005, the company acquired the ActiveSentry technology developed by Intranode.
In April the company, which has its headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, France, opened its first international office when it set up a UK operation fronted by Mark Peters, a past channel manager for Surfcontrol and before that Websense.
Criston’s vunerability-management systems incorporate data produced out of the Security Tracker vulnerability database from SecurityGlobal.net, and the patch management module takes in technology from Shavlik. An agentless infrastructure module that is used for asset-discovery and application-mapping, and the desktop software distribution and remote management module complete the portfolio. Pricing points start at around $38,000.
As well as having big-name customers in France like Air France/KLM, Vaillant said 30% of revenue stems from business in Japan, the site of the company’s next office, with another planned in Germany by the third quarter.
