News and Events > Leeds MBA's are Finalists in National Business Plan Competition

Leeds MBA's are Finalists in National Business Plan Competition

February 10, 2004

Boulder, CO - A team of 2nd year MBA Students from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder will represent the western US as finalists in the Licensing Executives Society (LES) Business Plan Competition on February 11, 2004 in San Francisco. This competition is for business plans that include a significant intellectual property component. The MBA students collaborated with faculty in CU's computer science department to create a business plan for NetDog, based on the patentable technology created in the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. The NetDog team took home the 2nd place award at the Leeds Business School's graduate business plan competition, sponsored by the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.

NetDog, which includes Leeds MBA candidates Jay White, Chris Cahill, Chip Fuller and David Parkhurst, is a company with a superior Network Intrusion Prevention System (NIPS). Intrusion prevention systems examine network traffic through the use of detection processes. Any malicious activity, such as worms and viruses, are blocked by the detection processes before they are able to enter the network. Unlike competing NIPS, the NetDog product would provide the highest level of protection without sacrificing network speed. This represents a current market opportunity in the hundreds of $$ millions.

The speed of the processing is possible because of a "multiclassifier" invented by Dr. Antonio Carzaniga and Dr. Alexander Wolf in the Computer and Communications Security Research Center in the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. The multiclassifier technology allows the detection processes to be arranged in parallel, by instantly routing packets to the relevant process. Other NIPS require network traffic to be examined by each detection process, which bogs down the system and results in dropped packets.

"This is a wonderful example of what can result from combining CU's world class research with our leading Entrepreneurship program," said David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer, "We are delighted that the CU MBA students have this opportunity to compete on a national level."

"The judges were impressed by NetDog's solid business plan, based on an interesting new technology and supported by an experienced Board of Advisors," said Art Rose, VP of Local Chapters of LES.

The Leeds MBA candidates will receive an all-expense-paid trip to attend the LES Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA on February 11-13.