2017 was a year of innovation, excitement and promise for those in and around the tech industry – with innovation being delivered in many cases by startups. After a year of explosive progress, many will be wondering whether 2018 could be the year that technologies like blockchain hit the mainstream.
Cybersecurity innovation continues to be vital for defending against hackers who pose an increasingly deadly threat, a problem that is exacerbated by a widening skills gap that is affecting the tech industry as a whole. The shortage of skilled individuals is driving the need to automate aspects of cybersecurity defences, making the work of agile startups very valuable.
Regardless of where the world of cybersecurity might be heading, it is an unavoidable truth that the current threat landscape is bristling with danger, making it a fact of life that organisations and individuals must become aware and take action.
Organisations faced crippling financial and reputational damage at the hands of hackers in 2017, amplifying the discussion around insurance for cybersecurity. The world must also continue to act on the assumption that no defence is impregnable, meaning that we must look to innovative approaches to tracking down and repelling attackers that may already be inside the network.
Here at CBR we have compiled a list of startups championing ideas that we think could have a big impact in 2018 – so remember these names and make sure you keep an eye out for these future giants of security.
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Darktrace
Darktrace prides itself on holding the record of being the first organisation to create an operational Enterprise Immune System. As the name suggests, this capability is designed to give a clear field of vision to defend against emerging attacks, giving the user the ability to detect threats and respond to them proactively.
The startup has been building upon strong foundations, having been found by machine learning experts and mathematicians from the University of Cambridge. In addition to these talented individuals, experts from GCHQ and MI5 were also involved in the inception and work of the company.
Showing no sign of stopping, Darktrace has achieved revenue growth of in excess of 600 per cent year over year, in addition to a growing base of employees. These successes have not gone unnoticed, with the company gaining the ‘Best Security Company of the Year 2016’ title at the Info Security Global Excellence Awards.
ThreatInformer
With cyberattacks threatening major financial damage, the concept of cyber insurance is becoming ever more real. Looking to answer this problem is UK cyber startup, ThreatInformer. Standing apart from the other startups in our list, this company is centred upon cyber insurance and provide tools geared toward the writing and placement of risk.
The CEO of the company, Ryan Jones, has his knowledge rooted in cybersecurity and offers a wealth of knowledge in incident response, providing him with an intimate understanding of threats. With this knowledge the CEO is driving the startup toward assisting insurance professionals with cyber risk.
The company has a core belief driving it on its mission that cyber insurance will ultimately be instrumental in enhancing cyber defences in the near future – could this be the case in 2018? It is definitely worth watching out for.
Illumio
Illumio, is an American security startup offering a micro-segmentation technology approach to preventing cyber threats from spreading within the cloud or data centres. Illumio claims that it offers a streamlined approach to achieving segmentation, providing a capability that allows the user to choose the level of segmentation to suit where it is used.
Transparency and visibility are becoming increasingly important for security, with numerous vendors aiming to provide offerings that achieve it. Illumio provides a live map across environments to give an all-encompassing vantage point over your organisation.
Illumio’s offering is leveraged by the likes of Morgan Stanley, Salesforce and BNP Paribas, a strong indication of the capabilities of the segmentation security service.
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Source Defense
Source Defense is a provider of website security based in Israel, but this startup company says that it is the first to offer customers prevention technology geared towards attacks from third-parties. This, the company claims, is down to it being the first to use a SaaS platform for the purpose of tracking third-party activity while on a user’s site.
By implementing this technology the company believes that users will be saved a considerable amount of valuable time. This is potentially an extremely attractive proposition, with the cybersecurity skills gap widening constantly as the volume of threats continues to multiply.
The company’s CEO, Hadar Blutrich, has had experience in working on projects with the likes of Chase and Bank of America, in addition to experience in developing emerging technologies for tackling changing challenges. The company’s leadership team have all had deep and previous experience in the third-party ecosystem.
Attivo Networks
Undoubtedly worth of a place on our list of startups to watch, Attivo Networks is an exciting cybersecurity company because of its focus on inside-the-network attacks, a problem that characterises the ongoing cybersecurity crisis the world is facing. We are constantly hearing about breaches that have been discovered after months have passed, meaning that attackers have been roaming freely within the network.
Based in California, the company aims to combat this problem with a deception platform that is designed to detect intrusions in real-time. Not only does Attivo Networks look to protect against network intrusions, it also focusses on public and private data centres and specialised environments like SCADA or IoT.
As mentioned, deception is at the core of the protection offered by Attivo Networks. The company recognises the inability for any security organisation to ensure iron-clad security in this age of cyber uncertainty, so it takes the stance that attackers are already inside. With this approach, the deception platform involves high-interaction decoys to defend valuable property from marauding intruders.
Among the targets that the Attivo Networks platform is suited to tracking are ransomware and phishing, two vectors that were extremely prominent in 2017, and look as though they are set to also be characteristic of the threat landscape we are facing in 2018.
