Before he started a company, Stephen Walker spent 20 years on computer security inside the National Security Agency, ARPA and the Pentagon. In 1983 he founded Trusted Information Systems in Maryland. By 1996 its Gauntlet firewall was one of the best-known ways to wall a corporate network off from the open internet. That October, as businesses rushed online and worried about who might follow them in, TIS went public.

From Toolkit to Gauntlet

TIS built its name on security research, with a strong reputation among government security experts. Then the internet arrived. The company released an Internet Firewall Toolkit, and in 1994 it turned that work into the Gauntlet Internet Firewall. Gauntlet let companies wall off a trusted network from an untrusted one. It also built encrypted links, called virtual private networks, across the open internet. The bet was that every company going online would need a guard at the gate.

Thirteen Dollars, Then McAfee's Parent

TIS priced at $13 a share in October 1996 and listed on Nasdaq as TISX. Its directors and officers still held about 41 percent of the stock. The firewall market grew crowded fast, with Check Point and others selling their own boxes. In 1998 Network Associates, the company formed by McAfee's merger with Network General, bought TIS. Gauntlet became part of its security lineup.

Cover: Gauntlet from a Tournament Garniture of a Hapsburg Prince, Anton Peffenhauser. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an armored gauntlet (the Gauntlet firewall).