Entrepreneur's venture helps protect computers

Tom DiClemente plants seeds that help create and sustain promising high-tech companies. He offers financing from his venture capital firm, Gran Sasso Ventures LP.

DiClemente of Derry Twp. also provides expertise. Last year, he became CEO of hField Technologies Inc., a company in Bethlehem that developed a product to strengthen a wireless Internet signal to computers.

The man behind the device, known as Wi-Fire, is a 2005 graduate of Lehigh University.

DiClemente, 54, also has started businesses. His most promising at the moment looks to be DayZero Systems Inc., which DiClemente co-founded with Peng Liu, an associate professor at Penn State University. The company is developing software to protect computer networks from "unknown" attacks.

In January, DayZero was awarded more than $200,000 to help get its product on the market. The money came from The Technology Collaborative, a statewide economic development organization in Pittsburgh.

A panel of representatives from 54 high-tech companies reviewed 44 proposals to fund DayZero and other startups in Pennsylvania. DayZero was among seven companies picked to receive money.

"This is about taking a product to market, or the next step where the product will attract venture capital," said David Ruppersberger, CEO of The Technology Collaborative. "Our proposals are vetted pretty well in terms of technical merit."

DiClemente explained what makes DayZero different from other software products that fight computer viruses and other attacks. "There are two traditional ways of fighting malicious codes. One is block all the known bad. It's usually days until a fix gets out there to prevent further damage," he said. "The other is you only allow in known good. You leave a lot of the world that you can't touch.

"We're in the farther out world, where we deal with the unknown threat, and that is what our technology is about," he added.

DiClemente said DayZero is "signature free," meaning whatever is attacking the network cannot detect the presence of DayZero.

DayZero dates to 2002. Two federal agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, helped fund research at Penn State leading to DayZero, DiClemente said.

The software is about a year from getting on the market. DayZero has no employees. The company contracts with teams that are doing product development at Penn State and in China.

DiClemente used to be a senior executive at AMP Inc.

In 1999, he lost his job as corporate vice president-Americas when AMP was purchased by Tyco International Ltd. He received a cash severance of $770,000, according to an AMP proxy statement filed at the time.

While at AMP, he ran the company's operations throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, DiClemente said.

"In my last position I had 29 subsidiary companies," including startups and companies needing a "turnaround," DiClemente said.

Working with young and struggling companies is nothing new to him.

DiClemente said central Pennsylvania has "very good resources" to assist emerging high-tech firms. It's easier for midstate companies to survive because there isn't as much competition. The challenge is that no deep pockets of private investment money are available.

But "the area is getting a good track record," DiClemente said. "It just takes time. Slowly, that will attract more and more money, and that is what helps companies stay."