An Israeli cybersecurity firm entering the U.S. market through Atlanta has shifted it service toward protecting the rising number of workers connecting to company servers from home as the coronavirus pandemic restricts movement around the world.
Cyber 2.0’s main solution focused on companies’ main file servers, but it quickly pivoted when it became evident that remote work would abruptly become the norm.
“As we see it, once the coronavirus was out, everything changed,” Cyber 2.0 Vice President Sneer Rozenfeld told Global Atlanta via email. “We saw it as an opportunity; we adapted our technology to give a defense to employees working from home through cloud management server. Here in Israel we are almost at full lockdown, but we took the lemon and turned it into lemonade.”
Many cybersecurity products focus on preventing through a “biological model,” detecting and attacking viruses once they’re inside the walls of a system. Cyber 2.0 has traditionally focused on preventing intrusions by limiting and encoding software allowed connect to the Internet in the first place. Mr. Rozenfeld has called it “prevention without detection.”
But with individuals now connecting from home to a cloud-based server, the threat is more distributed; the new service, which works with companies’ existing systems, will establish a secure connection to servers. That will enable isolation of malware on an individual computer to prevent the broader network from being compromised.
Cyber 2.0 has turned to hacker competitions to prove its credibility in a crowded industry.
A PDF file is loaded onto a file-sharing server, and the global hacker community is invited to try and retrieve it. Out of 300, no one was able to claim the $100,000 reward promised during an event hosted with Georgia Tech and the University of North Georgia in early 2019. A total of 956 hackers have tried to no avail to crack Cyber 2.0’s defenses across two competitions.
With the coronavirus restricting travel, Cyber 2.0 is launching a new edition from its home base in Tel Aviv.
“We planned to do another challenge this year but due to the coronavirus we are forbidden from traveling or from doing events, so we took it home, where everyone is anyway,” Mr. Rozenfeld said. “After the coronavirus is over, everything will change. Companies will continue letting their employees work from home and we think this is where the market is going.”
Already downloads of the Cyber 2.0 “home agent” have been growing in Peachtree Corners, where it has a sales office, and around metro Atlanta.
The adapted challenge April 6 is open to anyone in the world hacking from home. This time, the reward is 10,000 Israel new shekels (about $2,819). If not claimed, it will be donated to Israel’s Good Guys Association, which distributes food and other items to the poor.
Early on in its development, Cyber 2.0 has the flexibility larger enterprises may not to shift focus and add new capabilities.
“We always think outside the box and take everything as a challenge and as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves,” Mr. Rozenfeld.
The company wasn’t destined for Atlanta originally, but was convinced to locate here after a dogged pursuit by local economic development agencies. Read more about that story here
Learn more about the latest hackers challenge: https://www.cyber20.com/hackers-challenge