Why PingSafe Believes Assault Is The Finest Kind Of Cyber Defence

Need to know the way cyber attackers will goal your organisation’s IT techniques and networks? The very best particular person to ask might properly be somebody who has spent their skilled life launching such assaults. Enter Anand Prakash, the co-founder and CEO of PingSafe, a Singapore-based enterprise which is at present asserting a $3.3 million seed funding spherical.

Prakash has spent a lot of the previous 10 years working as a “white hat” hacker – a hacker paid to attempt to infiltrate organisations’ cyber defences as a way to take a look at them for vulnerabilities. “I began in faculty once I heard a few pal who was paid to search out bugs in Fb’s techniques, which seemed like enjoyable,” he recollects. “Inside a few years, I used to be one in every of Fb’s top-ranked bug hunters, and I used to be additionally working for firms comparable to Uber and Twitter.”

Even the most important and most technology-savvy companies have weaknesses they don’t find out about, says Prakash who arrange PingSafe with co-founder Nishant Mittal. He factors to a bug at Fb that may have enabled him to entry a number of consumer accounts, and a flaw at Uber that would have meant him by no means paying for a journey once more. “I might see a really clear hole available in the market,” Prakash provides. “These companies had been taking cyber safety very significantly however folks had been nonetheless discovering points.”

Specifically, Prakash factors to the expansion of cloud computing, now the default choice for organisations as they construct out IT infrastructure, as driving vulnerabilities. Cloud deployments give everybody within the organisation freedom to vary its IT techniques and prolong its footprint – by way of software-as-a-service subscriptions, for instance. That makes it a lot more durable to place strong cyber safety protections in place.

PingSafe has due to this fact been arrange as a cloud-native software safety platform – a CNAPP within the trade jargon – with Prakash billing the corporate as “the primary to attempt to clear up this downside with an offensive method”. By means of its platform, PingSafe targets clients’ techniques utilizing the ways and techniques employed by hackers, trying to find weaknesses {that a} unhealthy actor might exploit. As soon as these vulnerabilities are uncovered PingSafe advises the consumer on find out how to repair them. The testing then continues in actual time, with PingSafe always updating its assault strategies in step with intelligence from the hacker neighborhood.

“Each organisation is in danger due to cloud misconfigurations, however different safety options received’t essentially choose them up,” Prakash provides. “Our platform can sit alongside the opposite cyber safety merchandise that the organisation is utilizing.”

Prakash’s repute within the white hat neighborhood gave the enterprise a headstart, with PingSafe launching in March 2022 with 10 early adopter shoppers. Revenues have grown 10 occasions since then, with the corporate now working with greater than 60 enterprise clients. “These are cloud native firms for whom safety is totally essential,” Prakash provides.

Robust testimonials from shoppers have helped with development. “PingSafe’s CNAPP platform is considerably much less noisy and its alerts are extra actionable as in comparison with alternate options,” says Daniel Wong, chief data safety officer at know-how enterprise Skyflow. Hari Palappetty, vice chairman of engineering at know-how enterprise Close to Intelligence factors to “its functionality to offer proof of exploitability” as a key characteristic.

Buyers have additionally take a eager curiosity within the enterprise, pointing to the potential for fast development within the cloud safety sector. Analysis from Market and Market estimates that the CNAPP trade was value round $8 billion final 12 months, however forecasts 20% annual development within the years to return.

PingSafe’s seed spherical sees it choose up exterior funding for the primary time. The spherical was led by Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia’s Surge scale-up program, with participation from a variety of distinguished angel traders.

A kind of angels, Rahul Chari, the co-founder of PhonePe, says: “As organisations develop and scale purposes within the cloud, holistic cloud safety administration is essential to make sure resilience in opposition to threats and breaches – PingSafe’s staff is extremely motivated and has the precise market expertise to make PingSafe a frontrunner on this house.”

The funding is earmarked for additional funding in PingSafe’s product growth, however the firm can also be investing in an elevated presence within the US, with Prakash on account of relocate there shortly.