Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Jerry Melnick, CEO of SIOS (Part 1)

Jerry discusses high availability infrastructures in cloud computing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to the company.

Jerry Melnick: I’m the CEO and President of SIOS. I joined here about two and a half years ago. My background is in the areas of photonic computing and database systems. I came out of a Massachusetts-based startup known as Marathon Technologies. I came to SIOS because of the background that I saw here and the opportunity that was quite unusual and exceptional in terms of the fact that I could see that the product set here had an opportunity to meet a significant number of demands I had heard when I was in the space of photonic computing .

The real value proposition for the high availability offering that SIOS Technology provides is around the ability to be very flexible in terms of the types of high availability app configurations that can be constructed and the relevance in today’s infrastructure. Just to back up a little bit more about SIOS itself, SIOS was originally known as a SteelEye Technology focused on high availability clustering to deliver high level SLAs. The company cut its teeth in its first real enterprise high availability capability for Linux. The company provided solutions for database systems and later Windows and SQL server. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cybersecurity: Neal Creighton, CEO of CounterTack (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: These detections that you’re making, are you able to trace that back to who is actually initiating these attacks?

Neal Creighton: The first and foremost thing that we try and do is stop the attack. That’s where we’re focused. We’re trying to keep the company off the headlines. That’s number one. The attribution piece is very hard because the attackers will come in and they will hide their tracks on their location. You’re able to see all that information that is applicable to the attack there. There are certain trades. We have enough information to say that certain payloads we see are characteristic of payloads we’ve seen from certain criminal elements or certain countries.

We can compare those and make predictions about where that came from. Then there are certain attacks that we think are pretty interesting like the Sony attack. The last year or so was very similar to an attack that happened in South Korea about two and a half years ago. There were certain elements of the payload that were very, very close. We’re able to see that, but our primary job is to make sure that we stop the attack before it does the damage to the organization and keep that organization out of the newspapers and keep the customer safe. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Neal Creighton, CEO of CounterTack (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Next, let’s talk about some of your customers. In your work with them, what kinds of threats are you able to protect them from? Get a little bit more granular and bit more technical.

Neal Creighton: We have customers all over the world. We sold products to a couple of thousands and we have three products. At the end of the day, we’re trying to stop the types of attacks you’re reading about in the newspapers. Let’s go through some use cases. One use case is an insider threat use case. We’ve all heard about Snowden and the NSA and understand that insiders can have access to very valuable information. One of our customers is a large multinational firm from which its data was being taken. They didn’t know who was doing it but it was costing them. It was costing them a huge amount of money. We were able to put our technology in. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Neal Creighton, CEO of CounterTack (Part 2)

Neal Creighton: There are some good statistics that anti-virus stops only 50% only of the attacks. Most of those are mass and junk threats. The rest gets through. Of the very dangerous attacks that we’re reading about on other retailers and government agencies, it stops pretty much zero of those types of attacks and yet we’re still relying on it. There’s a big change in the industry right now to try and pick up the threats that haven’t been seen before. We have to do that through different techniques than what anti-viruses use. We’re in the middle of a pretty large shift where the anti-virus technology, I believe, will go away. It’s still relevant. It’s still useful in some capacity. To stop new types of attacks we need different technology. That’s where we play and that’s where some of our competitors play.

Sramana Mitra: Essentially, you are providing something that replaces anti-viruses. That’s the crux of what you said?

Neal Creighton: That’s our eventual goal. Right now, we’re focused on letting the anti-virus keep out the mass viruses that are not trying to do damage other than bog down machines, and focus on the state-sponsored or criminal elements that are trying to steal data that are much more >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Neal Creighton, CEO of CounterTack (Part 1)

Have you wondered what if cyber criminals could be tracked down and convicted like regular criminals? Very interesting discussion on that related issues, as well as possible entrepreneurial opportunities.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some background about yourself as well as CounterTack.

Neal Creighton: I’m the President and CEO of CounterTack, which is a cyber security company. I’ve been in cyber security for about 18 to 20 years now. This is my fifth cyber company. All venture-backed. A couple of those companies are with Semantic now and one is owned by Trend Micro. CounterTack has a very big value proposition. We’ve been around for six years or so and have about 100 employees. We’ve raised $70 million or so in total. We are one of the leading companies trying to solve the problem of all these threats attacking major corporations that you read about in the newspapers these days, whether they’re State-sponsored, activist groups, or criminal elements. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Andrew McLennan, President, North America of Inside Secure (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Switching topics, can you talk about open problems that you recommend entrepreneurs ought to be working on that you’re hearing from customers or you’re observing?

Andrew McLennan: That’s a tough one. I’m very focused on what I do. However if I speak outside of my experience, I think wearables is going to be the new frontier. That area, whether it’s software or hardware, is probably the hottest place for entrepreneurs to be. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Andrew McLennan, President, North America of Inside Secure (Part 5)

Andrew McLennan: Hacking cars is essentially a numbers game. What is the risk of your car being hacked when you’re doing 50 miles an hour? The only acceptable answer should be zero. Any other answer that means a non-zero chance of death due to software in your car is unacceptable. That would just kill the product.

Sramana Mitra: I know what you’re saying, but it’s not just the brakes switched off. It could be all kinds of other things.

Andrew McLennan: When we do have autonomous cars and they’re driving themselves, someone can hack the software and kidnap you. It could be anything from location tracking to stealing your car. It could be just stealing data that’s in your car for whatever purpose. There are so many hacks in car systems. It’s terrifying. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Andrew McLennan, President, North America of Inside Secure (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch the discussion to Internet of Things. On our blog, we have two series that are related. One is cyber security and the other is Internet of Things. One of the issues that we’ve been hearing about from various people is that there are large swaths of the Internet of Things applications that customers  are not going forward with because of security concerns. If you turn everything on a retail shelf into an Internet of Things situation, the surface area that can cause cyber security breaches goes up exponentially. Retailers are cautious about that and are afraid of that. Tell me what you are seeing in your work with Internet of Things. What is your approach with Internet of Things? How are you adding to the challenge of the Internet of Things situation?

Andrew McLennan: I’ll deal with the hardware aspect of that first, then I’ll talk somewhat on the software. What we see with Internet of Things is that people are selling the product. They don’t have a high degree of security if any at all. What we see on the hardware side is people >>>