Bro Wins InfoWorld Bossie Award
October 7, 2014
Bro, ICSI’s open-source network monitoring platform, is a recipient of an IDG’s InfoWorld Bossie Award, recognizing the year’s best business-oriented open-source software. Bro is one of nine networking and security tools recognized this year and 130 tools recognized in all categories.
Bro was originally developed by Professor Vern Paxson, who now directs networking and security research at ICSI. It continues to be developed at ICSI and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign. Today, Bro is used to monitor and secure the network infrastructure at major universities, research labs, supercomputing centers, open-science communities, and Fortune 50 companies. Last year, the Bro team received a three-year, $3.4 million National Science Foundation grant to establish the Bro Center of Expertise, a central point of contact for NSF-funded institutions that promotes Bro as a comprehensive, low-cost security platform specifically for education and science environments.
“InfoWorld's 2014 Bossie Award winners show that open source continues to lead the way in every corner of computing,” said Doug Dineley, InfoWorld’s executive editor. “Among our 130 winners you'll find not just the best open-source projects, but some of the best software period.”
In announcing the award, InfoWorld mentioned Bro’s ability “to accomplish some powerful magic,” saying, “This isn’t your father’s IDS.”