With only 2,000 certified security professionals worldwide, a new company stands to make a big splash. Six consultants from Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG just left the security of the Big 5 landscape to form their new company, Foundstone Inc. The company will provide security solutions for companies and plans to address the severe shortage of security experts available today.

The founding white hat experts plan to reduce the chasm between e-Commerce and security. Their goal is to utilize hands-on classroom training where clients are taught how to hack and how to prevent hacking. The company also will become an information source as it publishes easy-to-understand articles and establishes its Web site that features vendor neutral security information. Finally, the company will provide consulting services for clients.

Two of the founding partners, George Kurtz and Stuart McClure, are international experts on technology related security issues. They also are co-authors of Hacking Exposed – Network Security Secrets & Solutions and have been interviewed by Business Week, CNN, USA Today and The Washington Post, among others.

Foundstone is now one of only two pure-play security service providers in the market. The company believes that the shortage of security professionals with deep technical knowledge is the single largest inhibitor of global growth and adoption of e-commerce technologies.