The firm is spearheading innovation in Virtual Cyber Fusion technology, says Akshat Jain, CTO and Co-founder.
New Delhi: In an interaction, Akshat Jain, CTO and Co-founder, Cyware, talked about a host of issues. Excerpts:
Q: What is Cyware about? Describe the journey so far.
A: We are an organization that strives to transform the cybersecurity space and spearhead innovation in Virtual Cyber Fusion technology. Anuj Goel and I started the company with the vision of helping organizations reimagine the way they approach and manage cybersecurity. Our prior experiences in steering large security and technology teams made us realize the inadequacies of reactive, manually-driven, and intelligence-deprived cybersecurity strategies that put organizations at a disadvantage against threat actors. Another missing aspect was collaboration, which made security teams within organizations work in silos, rendering their overall threat response inefficient. We wanted to fill all these gaps and thus, began embarking on our journey to revolutionize the cybersecurity landscape.
Q: What sets you apart from your competitors?
A: We are the industry’s only provider of Virtual Cyber Fusion Center (vCFC) that fosters collaboration between siloed security teams while delivering advanced threat intelligence and SOAR capabilities in a truly modular and integrated manner. Modern-day Security Operations Centers (SOCs) employ a plethora of tools to address a wide range of use cases. However, a lack of capability for different security teams within organizations to collaborate often makes threat response ineffective and incomplete. The challenge is further compounded by the incompetencies of security teams to derive and operationalize actionable threat intelligence. Cyware’s expertise is in enabling collective defense via automated threat intelligence sharing between organizations and their stakeholders and implementing orchestration and automation workflows for handling threats in an integrated and collaborative manner.
Q: What challenges did you face while starting up? How did you overcome them?
A: With threat actors now having no dearth of skill and resources, and are even getting sponsored by nation-states, it’s becoming increasingly challenging for organizations to defend themselves. Our foremost challenge was to bring a strategic shift in the manner in which organizations perceive and manage security risks. To solve this challenge, we built the industry’s first vCFC.
Q: How many customers do you have?
A: We are taking a step forward every day. Our client pool comprises Fortune 2000s, mid-market enterprises, National CERTs, information sharing communities (ISACs/ISAOs), regulatory bodies, government agencies, and industry groups across the globe.
Q: How has Cyware emerged as a leader in the security space?
A: Cyware is the industry’s only provider of the Virtual Cyber Fusion platform that has garnered immense interest and appreciation from our customers and industry analysts. Our Virtual Cyber Fusion solutions come with unique capabilities that allow organizations to operationalize all kinds of threat intelligence in an end-to-end manner. Furthermore, our SOAR solutions enable threat response at machine speed while weaving together a single, uniform security architecture through end-to-end orchestration.
Q: With the Covid-19 Pandemic outbreak being so rampant in our country, how has Cyware played its role in the situation?
A: The pandemic made remote work the new norm, broadening the potential attack surface for organized cybercriminal groups, state-sponsored hackers, online scammers, and other malicious actors. It provided the cybercriminals with a new opportunity to target even those organizations that previously used to think they were not at risk. During the pandemic, Cyware Virtual Cyber Fusion solutions have enabled organizations to identify and mitigate threats by analyzing and actioning on high confidence threat intelligence while automating response to eliminate threats at machine speed.
Q: Please explain the technologies of Cyware’s SOAR solutions?
A: Security teams can automate complex threat response workflows using Cyware’s SOAR solutions, reducing the time spent on manual tasks and eliminating threats from compromised networks and systems. Our SOAR capabilities transform threat response, helping security teams quickly and effectively respond to advanced threats.
In contrast to conventional SOAR solutions, Cyware’s SOAR platform offers cross-functional and cross-environmental orchestration capabilities to security teams. With Cyware’s SOAR platform, security teams can orchestrate workflows across security, IT/ITSM, and DevOps tools. .
Q: What are the threat factors that one should look out for in the virtual workplace today?
A: To prevent threat actors from invading the virtual workplace, organizations must keep an eye on their internal as well as the external scope of risks. Internally, they need to watch over the flow of data across machines and humans and externally, the digital connectedness and data sharing across suppliers, vendors, and partners.
To acclimatize to the changing threat ecosystem, organizations must think out-of-the-box and embrace a holistic approach toward cybersecurity that comprises different types of security infrastructure and indispensable defenses against emerging threats. Espousing a reactive approach toward cybersecurity can end up negatively impacting an organization’s assets and reputation.
The need of the hour is a proactive approach powered by situational awareness, real-time alerting, and actionable threat intelligence to respond to and keep pace with adversaries and their complex operations.