Vigilon opens operation center in Chicago

Published 8 November 2006

The State of Illinois is actively seeking homeland security and business continuity companies; the latest to embrace the Windy City is Israeli enterprise security specialist Vigilon, which opens an operation center in Chicago

Chicago, here we come: McLean, Virginia- and Tel Aviv, Israel-based Vigilon, the enterprise security specialist, is opening data protection center in Chicago. We note that it is the 16th Israeli company to adopt the Windy City as its operations base in North America.

Vigilon’s flagship produce is Continual Vigilance, a software platform which provides network security to browsers, with aprticular emphasis on the security of those browsers operating in OpenSource environments. The company’s Continual Vigilance center in Chicago will be operated in collaboration with leading research and teaching centers at the state, among them Northwestern University, Harper College, and the University of Illinois.

Alon Moritz, Vigilon chairman and chief product architect, said: “Chicago is the ideal location for the Continual Vigilance Center. The high level of awareness demonstrated by the State of Illinois in homeland security issues has enabled experts from the private, government, and academic sectors to join forces in the establishment of a global network security threat analysis center.” Moritz noted that the Illinois state administration has provided a comfortable and welcoming environment for Israeli companies wishing to expand their activity in the United States.

Illinois has been actively courting homeland security companies to come to the state. Earlier this year Governor Rod Blagojevich announced the creation of the Homeland Security Market Development (HSMD) bureau within the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) for the purpose of attracting, supporting, and engaging businesses in the homeland security sector.

-read more in Ran Dagoni’s Globes report; read more about Continual Vigilance at Vigilon Web site; and see the HSMD Web site

Michael: The text below should be in a bluie box

Chicago, Chicago

Carl Sandburg described Chicago as “the city of broad shoulders.” Indeed. Chicago has a $366 billion local economy — larger than that of Switzerland or Taiwan. In addition, Chicago is No. 1 in the United States in:

* Private sector jobs

* Business services employment

* Size of high technology workforce

* Business travel destination

* Manufacturing

* Distribution by:

* Trucking

* Intermodal

* Rail

* Air transport

* As a convention destination

* Data transmission by volume

* In the number of MDs offering medical services

* Medicine-pharmaceutical production

Chicago is also No. 1 in the United States in Nobel Prize winners — with the University of Chicago being home to 77 Prize winners