Today the cyber-attacks are increasing in volume, scale, and sophistication, making it all the more difficult for our cybersecurity professionals to manage an incident when it takes place, security needs to be more sophisticated. Sharon Rosenman, VP-Marketing at Cyberbit, in an interview with CIO AXIS, talks about the challenges that Cyberbit helps businesses to overcome.
Q. What are some of the challenges that Cyberbit helps businesses to overcome?
Today, organizations are not ready for a cyberattack. They have invested in tools to prevent and minimize the impact of attacks, but once a persistent attack penetrates defences, and eventually they will, these organisations are not ready.
First – they have no people to respond. We are witnessing a global shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals. As per IBM, India itself needs a minimum of 3 million cybersecurity professionals at present while its current cybersecurity workforce is estimated to be less than 0.1 million. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, on a global level, the international economy is deemed to lose 6 trillion annually due to this skill shortage by 2021. Therefore, cybersecurity professionals are not ready for an attack. They have never responded to a real-world cyberattack and will experience their first one on the job. The attacks are still increasing in volume, scale, and sophistication, making it all the more difficult for our cybersecurity professionals to manage an incident when it takes place, eventually. Our Cyberbit Range product is a cybersecurity training and simulation platform that helps security exerts get ready for an attack. Just like a flight simulator, Cyberbit Range provides a hyper-realistic simulation environment that replicates a Security Operation Centre (SOC). This approach boosts the security team’s skillset and teamwork while reducing onboarding time for fresh talent.
Second – their processes are not ready. They are dealing with an overwhelming volume of alerts and technologies which their teams cannot handle, nor do they have the processes for. Our Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) solution, called SOC 3D, streamlines the security operation by automating incident response playbooks and integrating multiple tools into a single screen. This makes the analyst’s life much easier, and in fact triples the capacity of the SOC and reduce time-to-
respond by up to 90%.
Third – the risk to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) networks is now key. These ICS networks are used to control electric grids, transportation systems, airport systems, manufacturing lines, power plants, oil & gas lines and smart buildings. In these environments, a cyberattack can risk lives and cause environmental damage. Furthermore, IT, OT, and IoT networks are gradually converging, which means that attackers can now enter sensitive ICS networks by simply sending a phishing email. Cyberbit’s SCADAShield product is a game changer in this regard. It is an OT monitoring solution designed for critical infrastructure networks and automation systems. It monitors ICS networks to provide visibility and threat detection that eliminates these life-threatening scenarios.
Finally – one of the biggest lessons learned from recent financial cyberattacks is that these evasive attacks bypass conventional tools like anti-malware and firewalls. Our EDR solution leverages Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to detect attacks that can evade conventional systems.
Q. What is Cyberbit’s core business focus areas? What is your vertical market focus and why?
For Cyberbit Range we are targeting a wide range of major growth segments including Banking and Financial institutes, Government entities, Major IT/ITeS firms, MSSPs, as well as Universities offering Information security courses. Our cyber range is the market leading cybersecurity training product and we believe it can eventually turn India into a global hub for training cybersecurity professionals. For SCADAShield, we are eyeing Airports, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing Companies, Smart Cities, power generation and distribution companies, and other utility segment
Q. What will be the biggest drivers for security spending in the next twelve months?
A large number of attacks in 2018 has indicated that the protection of customer information is going to be one of the chief reasons for doing so. Organizations have a lot at stake in the digital domain and cannot afford the distrust that generally follows a cybersecurity breach. Other reasons include compliance with laws or regulations and the development of a proficient cybersecurity team that can ably handle incidences. We see that the gap between the volume and complexity of security incidents, and the lack of resources, is driving organizations to solutions that help them do more with less and ensure that they are ready for the inevitable attack.
Q. In this crowded security market, what sets you apart from the competitors?
Cyberbit is a unique company in many ways:
First – we have been very early to offer a cyber range training and simulation product placing us way ahead of the competition as the definite market leaders. We have by far more live deployments than any other similar solution, and we are unique in our ability to offer an immersive training environment which is as close as it gets to the real world. Our cyber range is used by enterprises, governments, militaries, MSSPs, and higher education institutions all over the world.
Second – our products are military-grade solutions, making them suitable for the large and sensitive organizations we work with. For example, our endpoint detection and response platform (EDR) was designed to support fully isolated (air-gapped) networks, which means that sensitive organizations can be confident that we are not sending their data outside, unlike competing products that send out customer data for analysis. This allows sensitive organizations – such as financial institutions, government agencies, and defence establishments – to keep their infrastructure and data isolated and protected from the open internet.
And finally – we are the only company providing end-to-end detection and response across IT and OT networks. Cyberbit is the only vendor offering both a home-grown SOAR product, OT detection and EDR for IT detection. These products are, available either as standalone products or integrated, which is an optimal solution for the converging IT/OT attack surface.
Q. What would be the role of managed security service providers (MSSPs)?
All system integrators and MSSP partners are focusing on the Indian market predominantly because we are the fastest growing economy across the globe. But it doesn’t stop them from penetrating the global market and addressing the pain areas of global customers as well. Since India has a very strong footprint of MSSPs and the systems integrators like TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, TechM, TCL, Hexaware and so on, we are seeing that the day-to-day services cost and the profit margins are also shrinking in India. All the system integrators and MSSPs are not limiting themselves to the Indian market, but are taking the next logical step by addressing all of the RFPs that are taking place across the globe. As an organization, we can understand where the industry is moving towards. So, our focus is to help MSSPs increase their profit margins, remain competitive, and provide best of breed service to retain customers. We are continuously aligning our product strategy with MSSP needs to ensure that MSSPs are handled not less than end-customers. For example, by including capabilities like multi tenancy for managing multiple customers. We also monitor trends like managed detection and response (MDR) and the need for managed SOC services, for which we offer our EDR product and SOAR product to MSSPs. We believe that MSSPs and SIs can also tap into the exploding training market and will be parenting with them to enable them to offer training services by means of licensing our cyber range platform.
Q. Where does Cyberbit stand in your scheme of things?
We have seen great traction in India for our products, especially for our cyber range. We foresee massive opportunities in state governments, banks, universities, and IT/ITeS companies in the Indian market. In a very short time we were able to sign up several customers in India for each of our 4 products. Hence, our management decided to increase our investment in India which is providing to be a becoming a fast-growing market. We have over 20 people on the ground in India and building our global support hub in India. India will be our headquarters for the entire Asia Pacific region. We are excited about our foray into the Indian market and expect to see additional customers buying into our vision in the next 12 to 18 months. Ultimately, we envision acquiring the pole position in the field of cybersecurity in India.