Centripetal

Centripetal is a cybersecurity company whose CleanINTERNET service is deployed between a customer's internet service provider and firewall in order to block known threats before traffic reaches the enterprise network. The company positions the offering as prevention rather than detection and response: it aggregates and normalizes threat data from hundreds of open-source, government, and commercial intelligence sources and enforces more than 10 billion indicators in real time at wire speed, inspecting individual packets as they arrive at the network edge.

CleanINTERNET is described by the company as both a platform and a service. The platform sits in front of the existing security stack, while a dedicated Intelligence Operations team monitors emerging and targeted threats in the customer environment, continuously updates enforcement as indicators change, and produces reports. Protection is applied consistently across on-premises environments, cloud workloads, mobile users, and DNS queries, with documented variants including CleanINTERNET for DNS, CleanINTERNET for AWS cloud environments, and CleanINTERNET DNS for Google Cloud Platform.

Under its earlier identity as Centripetal Networks Inc, the firm developed network hardware and software for trusted networks, with a focus on the defense and intelligence sectors. Products included RuleGate, a high-performance TCP/IP packet filter able to action threat indicators at full line-rate speed; the RG2010 and RG2100 RuleGate appliances, which operationalize millions of security rules at up to 10 Gbps line rate; a Network Survivability, Recovery & Reconstitution (NS2R) capability allowing packet-filtering devices to switch rapidly between large security policies; and Real-Time Active Network Defense, which applies live threat intelligence to network operations.

Founding story

Centripetal was founded in 2009 to protect organizations and secure connected commerce and economies, according to the company. The same founding year is recorded in a federal SBIR awardee registry entry for Centripetal Networks Inc, which lists Steven Rogers as founder and CEO.

Business model

Centripetal sells CleanINTERNET as a subscription-style managed threat prevention offering that combines a deployed enforcement platform with an ongoing intelligence operations service, sold directly and through a partner program of channel and industry partners.

Revenue derives from the CleanINTERNET platform-plus-service offering delivered to enterprise customers; the company historically also received federal SBIR awards totaling $1,949,837 across two Phase I and two Phase II awards.

Traction

Customer statements published by the company describe substantial reductions in security event volume: the Boston Red Sox IT operations director cites shielding of roughly five million events a day, or over 150 million per month; a senior cybersecurity architect at a northeastern university health system reports a decline from 3 million blocks per hour to 20,000 and then 6,000 per hour; and an incident response analyst at a Pacific gaming casino reports days with zero events. A federal awardee registry profile lists an employee range of 50-74 and a revenue range of $5M-$7.5M as of a 2019 profile edit, with 10-14 IP holdings.

Latest developments

The company continues to publish CleanINTERNET research and guidance, including 2025 material on operationalizing threat intelligence, intelligence-powered cybersecurity for financial services, building the CleanINTERNET business case, and CleanINTERNET DNS deployments for AWS and Google Cloud Platform, plus a resource mapping CleanINTERNET DNS to NIST Special Publication 800-81 Revision 3.