How Cybersecurity Startups Plan To Outsmart Hackers

Cybersecurity startups are increasingly investing in developing ultra-smart anti-fraud tools to protect against maturing, new age cybercriminals.

The increased investment activity and development efforts in the cybersecurity arena come in light of the growing number of cyberattacks, which are seemingly stronger with every attempt and have proven over and over again that the good-old firewall is not enough to protect companies and users against harm.

To deal with the intensifying cyberfraud situation, U.S. and Israeli startups are fast emerging as the saviors, with savvy combating techniques, such as “polymorphic technology,” which constantly modifies application structures on a computer, and “honeytraps,” which trick hackers into getting access to fake data, Reuters reported.

“We view this [deception technologies] as a $3 billion market over the next three years, with Israel and Silicon Valley being the epicenter of this innovation wave,” said Senior Technology Analyst Daniel Ives from FBR Capital Markets.

Some of the U.S. and Israeli startups currently developing deception technology include Cymmetria and GuardiCore from Israel and California-based Attivo Networks and TrapX.

And while these startups might be still be seen as fledgling in the cybersecurity space, they most certainly are not. For instance, TrapX Security’s product, DeceptionGrid, which triggers a security alert when it sees usage of fake information, is currently being used by Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecoms group, Israel’s central bank and American hospital chain HCA, Reuters reported.

The long list of heavyweight clients of such young startups corroborates a Gartner forecast, which predicts that as many as 10 percent of businesses will be using deception tactics in the next couple years. However, improving adoption among financial institutions and tech companies might prove to be an uphill battle, as Gartner Analyst Laurence Pingree pointed out.

“Educating security buyers on its usefulness will be crucial,” he told Reuters.

Though the industry seems to be growing in leaps and bounds, the development of these technologies, for the most part, is still nascent and remains to be fully tested against extensive attacks.

“A lot of companies are looking at it, but it’s still early days,” a security executive at a Fortune 500 company stated.

Ziv Mador, head of research at Trustwave, a Chicago-based cybersecurity firm agreed. “They will be challenged by the fact that [some] hackers are so sophisticated they might detect decoy servers or fake data.”