People frequently ask me if I see any interesting startups in the security industry. Let me give you three examples but only because they fit an interesting trend.

Obviously there is a long history of warfare innovation leading to civilian products. What might we look for now? Today’s battles are fought with information tools. And the safety of information is most pressing to intelligence organizations so they seek and develop talent who innovate in data protection. Naturally this is leading us to a new generation of utility in securing information.

We are seeing those with deep experience and exposure to very difficult problems, within the intelligence community, get an entrepreneurial bug and launch startups. Whether you trust the founders or their product is not the point of this post.

Perhaps an historic example will clarify. Sometimes when I look at fancy kitchen knives from Japan I wonder if anyone ever protested innovations that made blades too sharp, too fair, or too strong. The utility of a tool in the kitchen surely benefited from innovations derived from battle. Making dinner with a better knife doesn’t mean you have to condone or even care about Samurai.

Here are three examples of companies that represent an emerging trend in creative thinking about tools we need to get better at protecting our data:

• Ex-NSA staff start company to protect Big Data by extending Apache Accumulo (an NSA enhancement to a Google project that now has been released to the public): Sqrrl
• Ex-NSA staff start company to make browsing the web safer by extending XWindows concept of centralized browser session pushed to remote displays: Light Point Security
• Ex-Unit 8200 staff start company to make SaaS safer by proxying and tracking all user behavior: AdAllom

Back to the simple knife, there some interesting studies that try to explain how Japanese civilian innovations evolved out of conflict. Creative thinking relative to explicit and tacit knowledge: