But catching much larger competitors like CA, Symantec, Trend Micro, McAfee and now Microsoft napping again might be hard. All those companies are well aware of the "risk window" problem and are hard at work at putting zero day protections into their products. At the same time, pure play vendors like Cyveillance, MarkMonitor and Cyota (now part of RSA Security) have pioneered a market in online risk monitoring and management by scrutinizing scam Web sites and other online criminal activity.

As with PestPatrol, which benefited from early partnerships with ZoneLabs and Sunbelt Software, the two are hoping to forge relationships with larger vendors that will promote their product.

Zone, which is now part of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., may be the first stop again, said Bales.

"It's instant credibility. People thought 'My firewall protects me,' Then Zone started selling PestPatrol alongside its product and it basically said 'You need this, too.'"

A beta of SocketShield is available from Exploit Prevention Labs' Web site. (See: http://www.explabs.net/index.html.) When it is commercially released, the product will sell for US$29.95, with discounts for large purchases.