Sandstorm Enterprises is a computer security software vendor founded in 1998 by Simson Garfinkel

Simson Garfinkel

Simson L. Garfinkel is an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Garfinkel is regarded as a leader in the fields of Digital forensics and Usable Security...

, James van Bokkelen, and Dan Geer

Dan Geer

Dan Geer is a computer security analyst and risk management specialist. He is recognized for raising awareness of critical computer and network security issues before the risks were widely understood, and for ground-breaking work on the economics of security....

. In January 2010, it was purchased by Niksun Enterprises.

Sandstorm is located in the greater Boston Area. Sandstorm's major products are PhoneSweep, a commercial multi-line telephone scanner (a war dialer

War dialing

War dialing or wardialing is a technique of using a modem to automatically scan a list of telephone numbers, usually dialing every number in a local area code to search for computers, Bulletin board systems and fax machines...

), introduced in 1998, and NetIntercept, a commercial network forensics tool, introduced in 2001. Designed as a second-generation network analysis tool, NetIntercept operates primarily at the level of TCP and UDP data streams and application-layer objects they transport.

In 2002 Sandstorm purchased LanWatch, a commercial packet-oriented LAN monitor originally developed by FTP Software

FTP Software

FTP Software was a software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey , Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen , Dave Bridgham and several other founding shareholders. It was the first of many companies to name themselves after an Internet protocol...

. LanWatch is sold a separate product, but much of its functionality is used by NetIntercept to display individual packets.