CYGNVS was recently named to the 2023 Enterprise Security Tech Top 20 list.
For organizations of any size, it’s not a matter of if your organization will experience a data breach, but when. A recent report found that more than half of all organizations (59%) had experienced an increase in the volume and severity of malware attacks this year. CYGNVS is a first-of-its-kind guided cyber crisis platform that enables companies to be connected, confident, in control, and compliant during a cyber crisis.
We spoke with Kevin Gaffney, CTO of CYGNVS, to discuss the company’s unique position in the cybersecurity industry, the importance of resiliency, and what lies ahead for the company.
How does CYGNVS support organizations after they’ve experienced a cyber-attack?
When an organization is presented with a cyber crisis, they are often shut off from their internal communications systems, or their system is rendered unsecured. This creates a lack of visibility for leaders into the entire response process and creates friction when working with external response partners. CYGNVS was born out of the necessity to provide organizations with a safe space during their worst moments. We’ve designed the platform to be a safe harbor by creating an out-of-band system that acts as a completely secure and separate crisis response room to guide them back on their feet safely. The CYGNVS network enables connection with an ecosystem of trusted experts while maintaining organizational ownership of the data. Lawyers, forensics specialists, insurers, and other expert consultants are available at a click-through to help businesses respond and recover during a crisis.
We also emphasize the importance of proactive preparation. In addition to crisis response, CYGNVS offers tools for organizations to create and maintain an incident response plan, along with hands-on support in practicing their plan through tabletop exercises. Our mission is to combine crisis management with preparedness, and we follow that mission by providing a holistic approach to cybersecurity.
One of CYGNVS’s standout features is its incident command center and access controls. Can you share more about how CYGNVS differentiates itself from its competitors?
Building CYGNVS has been an incredible journey for all of us. Cyber threats are always evolving, presenting new challenges and opportunities to innovate. The CYGNVS application has been built with industry best practices on the foundations of AWS technologies with security at its core to provide the performance, scalability, as well as isolation and separation required by organizations.
One of the highlights of my journey as CTO at CYGNVS has been our patented work - it’s a reflection of the innovation and technological complexity we’ve brought to the table. We’ve focused on building private, fine-grained, access-controlled rooms for organizations to manage who can join and what content can be seen by whom and when. Our patented Dynamic Tenancy has marked CYGNVS as a pioneer in cyber resilience. Before we created CYGNVS, companies would need to purchase, maintain, and integrate a series of individual tools and services to prepare and respond. Communication with internal and external response partners before CYGNVS has frequently relied on instant messaging tools, resulting in a loss of data control for the organization. No other platform can offer the imperative collaboration across organizations and their ecosystem of experts - lawyers, forensics, consultants, and insurers - while managing access at the organization, team, role, and user levels as CYGNVS.
With CYGNVS emerging from stealth earlier this year, how has the transition impacted the company’s overall approach and vision to solving market challenges?
Coming out of stealth marked a significant turning point for us. It enabled us to partner with more of the world’s best breach response experts and insurance companies to create a holistic platform for customers. We’re proud to have seen an increase in adoption of our product this year to help organizations prepare and respond. It’s allowed us opportunities to gain valuable feedback and insight on the product and to continue developing innovative ways to improve the platform’s performance and solve for the emerging challenges we’re seeing in the cyberspace market. For example, we’ve just launched a new feature, called Isolate mode, which allows customers with compromised or potentially compromised systems to quickly and easily transition from ‘peace mode’ to ‘crisis mode’ by redirecting any notifications to backup communication channels addresses.
With the growing importance of cyber insurance for organizations of all sizes, how do you view CYGNVS’s role in partnering with the insurance industry?
The world is shifting efforts from defense and prevention to resiliency when it comes to cyber-attacks. We see cyber insurance as an essential pillar of a company's cyber resiliency strategy to reduce risk - this is analogous to how the insurance industry immensely helped reduce fire risk over time by requiring building sprinkler systems. That is why collaborating with the cyber insurance industry has been a pivotal aspect of CYGNVS' vision. We work closely with major cyber insurance leaders to provide our platform as a service to their end insurers. In fact, CYGNVS currently partners with cyber insurance companies that represent 40% of the insurance market. Our partnerships with the insurance industry enhance the overall cyber readiness landscape, ensuring that all organizations are better prepared to mitigate and respond to cyber threats. As we continue to scale, we look forward to strengthening our cyber insurance partnerships to aid organizations in preparing and responding to cyber incidents effectively and with peace of mind.
With new cyber threats emerging daily, how is CYGNVS staying adaptable for the future?
Our top priority is to provide our customers with the preparation and practice needed to get to the other side of a cyber incident safely and quickly. The CYGNVS platform allows organizations to prepare and practice for an incident in the same environment they would use for real-time threats. That’s why we are continuing to build our ecosystem of integration, platform tools, and guidance tactics to ensure organizations stay connected and in control of all future threats and incidents. We’re always innovating to move the industry forward, whether that’s through technology or through our strategic partnerships. I can’t say too much just yet, but we’re excited to be working on a new platform innovation scheduled for release in the fall, so stay tuned.
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