Cylera is a company that specializes in Internet of Things (IoT) security and intelligence. They aim to protect people, safety, privacy, and business continuity. According to the company, they use next-generation, patented technology with a unique digital twin method that can assess true risk within a healthcare and clinical workflow context. We had the opportunity to sit down with Timur Ozeckin, CEO, Cylera, to discuss the company, its mission, and what IoT challenges it's looking to tackle for its customers in 2023.

What is the company's mission?
Cylera, a pioneer in agentless IoT and medical device security and intelligence solutions with a mission to safeguard what matters most: patient safety and the cybersecurity of healthcare networks. Its next-generation patented technology protects the entire connected healthcare IoT environment and solves the complex technological and operational cybersecurity challenges that hospitals face.
What threats are you combatting?
The biggest threats facing healthcare in these Covid and post-covid days are from nation state and various ransomware threat actors intruding upon healthcare networks and in many cases, stealing private patient data and affecting operations and business continuity. These actions specifically threaten many of the most vulnerable in our society - those in the care of our healthcare delivery organizations.
Cylera’s technology helps our customers know their assets with both depth and scale, so that they’re better equipped to detect, and detect earlier in the attack efforts to infiltrate, move laterally, and affect systems.
Cylera’s holistic, asset-centric cybersecurity platform identifies and inventories all devices, analyzes vulnerabilities and risk, mitigates threats in real-time, and helps to reduce attack surface - all with zero disruption to physical devices or operations. Cylera has seen immense success in the world of healthcare where clients use the technology to achieve safe delivery of patient care and services, secure privacy, and ensure business continuity.
Delivering 360-degree visibility, insight, and protection for all managed or unmanaged connected devices, Cylera’s users have a comprehensive record of devices on the network including connected medical devices, operational technology, and IoT devices.
A centralized cybersecurity solution, the contextually-aware platform identifies and quantifies connected device risks, pinpointing vulnerable devices and their clinical use cases. These devices are ranked based on tangible threats to patient safety and care delivery. Cylera is scalable, clinical-grade technology to support dense, high-traffic and multi-site deployments making the technology easy and simple.
Cylera poses zero impact on existing systems and processes during deployment or ongoing operation, so there is no need for users to worry about disruptions to patient care. Cylera’s real-time threat detection quarantines hostile threats with industry-leading accuracy rates.
What is the gap in current solutions that you are looking to fill?
Cylera is dedicated to the advancement and revolutionization of the world of security. The company has pioneered new ways that for healthcare, cost savings, and data protection come together operationally.
What makes Cylera different is its holistic cybersecurity platform. This identifies and inventories all devices, analyzes vulnerabilities and risk, mitigates threats in real-time, and all with zero disruption to physical devices or operations. It is the centralized cybersecurity solution that enterprise networks have needed.
Unlike others who use “first-generation” approaches, Cylera’s Platform is next-generation, patented healthcare IoT (HIoT) cybersecurity and intelligence platform. The groundbreaking technology has been specifically created for hospitals, which separates it from every other IoT security company in the world.
It has a unique digital twin and other methods that have zero disruption and measures “true risk” within a healthcare network and clinical workflow context. Cylera’s insights and recommendations simplify response playbooks when incidents arise, decrease time to remediate, and enable informed decision-making. Aligned with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO 27001, and others, Cylera addresses IoT risks to patient care and safety.
What security or compliance trends do you think we'll see more of in the coming year?
A: The Patch Act of 2022 recently received funding under HR2617 – the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which empowered the FDA to regulate security for medical and other healthcare IoT devices. Although FDA has not yet published the rules, this promises to transform HIoT security in 2023. HR2617 also empowers HHS and CISA to work together to improve cybersecurity across the healthcare industry. With these new FDA rules, we at Cylera anticipate many changes in healthcare cybersecurity in 2023.
We reckon we will see changes brought about by a combination of rising legislation and declining cyber breach insurance affordability that will result in how ransomware attacks are managed. Governments worldwide, led by Australia, are moving closer toward an outright ban on the payment of ransom or other extortion payments to cyber criminals. We can see the US moving in this direction, given exponentially rising extortion attacks, staggering business losses, and international cash transfers out of the country, especially as many of these international Cryptocurrency transfers end up in Russia. The overall cost of cyberattacks is now well over 6 trillion USD annually. If the perpetrators of these cybercrimes were a nation-state, they would be the third largest country in terms of GDP after the United States and the Peoples' Republic of China.
How do you anticipate Cylera evolving with organizations' needs?
The FDA changes will likely result in a prioritization of HIoT security by healthcare providers. Many more providers will seek the advice and technical expertise of Cylera to gain a better understanding of their IoT-connected assets, the risks each of these assets presents to patient safety, and the integrity and cybersecurity of medical networks.
In response, Cylera will continue to rise to the challenge and meet the changing needs of its customers by maintaining its efforts in improving its product line-up with new features and enhanced functionality, as always. Furthermore, the demand for healthcare cybersecurity solutions is growing at an unprecedented rate across all corners of the world — from North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific — and we can see Cylera's customer base rapidly expanding within these regions.