The Journey to Intelligent-Data
It has been my privilege to have had the experience of leading two prior companies (as founder) from startup to successful exits. Many lessons learned especially given neither had any capital upon which to springboard from; just great solutions, a strategy, hiring strong teams, a passion to win and having some fun along the way. Having just relocated to Boston, and after nearly four decades in the C suite, why create yet another NEWCO now?
During my stay at a NYC boutique IT firm as its CRO, I was able to absorb many aspects of the IT managed service ecosystem. I enjoyed Cybersecurity and network monitoring services the most. Just before an SKO I read a NYT magazine story about the cyberwar (cover with grenades on it) which grabbed my attention like few other articles had and so began a new passion involving machine learning, artificial intelligence and bots.
In 2017 I reactivated a consulting practice, helping startups with strategies and launched a ‘channel’ for a broadcast online polling application in LATAM. Yes, all rewarding and fun, but was I really helping others be safer (an ‘itch’ that remained with me) and more resilient in cyber warfare? NO…
Having followed and participated in several CIO summits of Venture firms in Menlo Park, I have been able to get early insight on “what’s next” in many technology platforms. I wanted to be among the first to champion those to our clients past and future as a channel partner. Hence Intelligent-Data is ‘rolling out’ by selecting a best in breed Cybersecurity platform (from our lens) first – then later the addition of AI/ ML productivity platforms – these applications from a top 5 USA Venture group with winning record of successes.
One great platform at a time.
Why now?
The truth is that I did not see any offensive cyber breakthrough technologies or platforms with real differentiators that could become a new de-facto standard until now. Discovery of external threat vectors still revolved around one of three processes, or combination (with some specialties - i.e. email etc.) consisting of these tests: (1) Scanner appliances (software / hardware) that are placed in/on a network to look for vulnerabilities - (2) PEN Testing (3) CEH Certified Ethical Hackers. Some or all of these are offered by outsourced MSSP’s and appeared, from my lens, to offer an outdated process. Organizations attack surfaces have evolved and the complexity of the security environments must be matched with enhanced tactics. Deep probes into all SaaS, IaaS and very importantly, 2nd & 3rd party partners must be conducted. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are part of the three tests above- yet they all (exception CEH) ask for permission or require pre-knowledge of the client’s network. Such is an advantage NO hacker would have; therefore, results requiring it have a bias and missing critical data.
For me to get jazzed, I needed to go beyond a SIEM, (post event analysis of trends), or any other cloud detection service all defensive in nature. Sure, trends help predict the future… I get its value and I believe in those analytics. Internal scans offer detection of known vulnerabilities to which a patch management process, importantly, must resolve.
First up for Intelligent-Data is an offensive cybersecurity vulnerability assessment platform that no other process was able to match and answered all my Cyber Security – Why’s (Part 2)
Intelligent-Data proud to announce that we are
now an authorized reseller for CyCognito
Interested in learning more on WHY we selected CyCognito and how it is different
Read Part 2 - ‘CyCognito a paradigm shift in vulnerability assessment’