Balbix: Predicting Data-Breaches Before They Happen

WannaCry and Petya are the names of two particularly damaging types of ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malware that infects computer systems, encrypts the data on those systems and doesn’t relinquish it until a ransom is paid. My fellow 10Fold colleague Kory Buckley recently wrote a blog on the topic.

Many of the organizations that were affected with these latest ransomware versions had adequate network security measures in place, including firewalls and antivirus, but the attack still managed get though most defenses. Much of that has to do with how the security stack around endpoint protection is configured. Balbix, a San Jose, CA-based network security company believes they have developed an innovative solution that will help organizations better protect potential endpoint vulnerabilities. And they’re doing it using advances in artificial intelligences (AI).

On June 6, Balbix emerged from stealth with the industry’s first predictive breach-risk platform that is able to predict and prevent an attack before it happens.Balbix was founded by Gaurav Banga, former CEO of Bromium, with the mission to measure risk and give enterprises the confidence they need with increasing their cyber-resilience.

In addition to launching their security platform, the company announced $8.6 million in investor funding from Mayfield.

How does Balbix work?

Balbix has built the market’s first platform to use predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence to automatically measure breach risk and calculate resilience. Balbix also uses specialized sensors across the enterprise to continuously discover and monitor all devices, apps and users across hundreds of potential attack vectors. These sensors allow security teams to visualize their breach risk and quickly prioritize operations and projects.

The Balbix’s platform features:

  1. Comprehensive risk heat-map: Balbix has created a system that automatically monitors and analyzes the enterprise network 24/7/365 across hundreds of attack vectors. This helps overburdened security teams prioritize mitigation projects by identifying areas of highest risk and surfacing actionable insights.
  2. Predictive risk analytics: Balbix predicts breach scenarios by analyzing indicators of risk, factors that point to the future likelihood of occurrence of security incidents, e.g., user clickthrough behavior indicating high phishing risk. In contrast, existing products rely on indicators of attack or compromise based on security events that have already happened.
  3. Effectiveness of mitigations and cyber-resilience: Balbix can compute the effectiveness of security mitigations already implemented and help prioritize planned security projects. The system also measures organizations’ cyber-resilience – the ability to limit the impact of security incidents.

In a recent eSecurity Planet article, Balbix founder and CEO, Gaurav Banga said, “AI and automation offer two key advantage in security: they’re very good at dealing with large vectors of data across hundreds of dimensions, and they provide the ability to understand and report the level of confidence in any conclusions reached in order to avoid false positives. Because of these two advantages, AI, when correctly implemented, can provide super-powers to cyber defenders, who now have the ability to come to the best conclusions given large amounts of fuzzy security data from their operating environment.”

In my eyes, Balbix is a network security company to watch. But don’t just take my word for it, read a few of the following stories to see what the media are saying about the company.

  1. eSecurity Planet
  2. eWeek
  3. Dark Reading
  4. SiliconTap
  5. Beta News
  6. FinSMEs
  7. Silicon Angle
  8. VMBlog
  9. SDxCentral
  10. IT Pro Portal
  11. FOX News
  12. IT Business Edge
  13. Channel Partners
  14. Virtual Strategy Magazine

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