CTO and vice president of engineering, AirDefense Even after 17 years in networking, Scott Hrastar, CTO of AirDefense, exuberantly insists, “There’s no other IT discipline with a higher wow factor.” The owner of 13 patents with another 13 pending, Hrastar’s passion of the moment is getting wireless security right. “A wireless security break is equivalent to putting an open Ethernet jack in the parking lot,” he quips. He’s an ardent advocate of the layered approach, a selling point of his AirDefense Enterprise 6.0 — a self-managing intrusion prevention system powered by behavioral analysis and correlation engines. Heard the stories of coffeehouse patrons duped into signing on to an imposter’s hot spot? Not with Enterprise 6.0, Hrastar asserts. Yet he readily agrees with those who feel we have a long way to go before we can take wireless security for granted. “There’s still the need for monitoring, or you risk someone pushing a hole right through your firewall,” he says.Back to 2005 CTO 25 Award winners SecurityTechnology IndustryIntrusion Detection SoftwareNetwork Security