Militus Inc: A Provider of Advanced Cybersecurity Products and Services

Bringing together the most effective tools and a variety of proprietary solutions to optimize visibility into network traffic and events, Militus Inc provides cybersecurity solutions that enable complete situational awareness. Today’s cyber threats are becoming more complex and sophisticated, requiring the collective intelligence of the latest tools. The company has created sophisticated algorithms and tools to build “complete” solutions. Militus Inc. consists of a team of cybersecurity professionals and industry experts coming together from a Fortune 25 global enterprise with a license to build the future generation of solutions.

Q & A’s with CEO Paul Manley

Why was the company set up? How did you select the vertical and decide to be a part of the global platform?

Boeing announced in 2015 that it was exiting the commercial cyber-security market. I and several key individuals decided to embark on launching our own company offering the same capabilities which we licensed from Boeing. We identified a lack of a truly integrated “best-of-breed” solution and decided it represented a major gap in the marketplace. Customers are tired of going to a bunch of individual providers for products and then other providers for services. Vendor overload is clearly a problem for most of the customers we talked to.

Tell us about your first product that was launched?

The Unified Security Analytics Manager (USAM) which was launched in December 2016 and was ready for market offering by the end of February 2017. We surveyed the industry to bring the best products and solutions together and put them into an appliance called the USAM. Rather than needing to go to the individual product companies for Packet Brokering, Firewall Protection, Breach Detection, Sandboxing, Vulnerability Scanning etc., we bring the industry’s best capabilities together and integrate it with a proprietary algorithm so they all talk to each other. This compilation engine vastly reduces cyber event noise or false positives. Then we inject it with some military-intelligence grade technology that we license from Boeing. The customer gets a portable device that plugs into his network and starts giving information in minutes. Together, this brings the best solution possible to the market to do things like find advanced malware and advanced, persistent threats. But, I think most importantly, it gives customers a complete situational awareness of their network and its vulnerabilities. You can wait until you are hacked to try to mitigate it or you can find the holes in your network early and take care of them. 

How successful was your first project roll on?

It was quite successful right out the gate for a very simple reason. The engineers we hired were all from the Boeing cybersecurity business in Mountain View and had learned from the plusses and minuses in building a somewhat similar device that Boeing had built to very successfully defend their own network. They had dreamed about building a much better version but were stymied by the large corporate bureaucracy that characterizes most big companies. We gave them the resources and running room to build the best possible appliance they could. The result is the USAM, which is very good now and which we will continuously improve.

What are your plans for expanding your company and its offering the next few years?

We have a robust roadmap for USAM capability upgrades based on the improvements in our own capabilities and those of the commercial products we incorporate. We are also embarked on the productization of the Narus nSystem, which we licensed from Boeing, into several distinct solutions while offering a superior CSIRT approach and SOC Architecture design. 

If you have to list five factors that are the biggest asset to your organization, what would they be?

• Our people
• Our Boeing heritage
• Existing customer relationships
• Boeing licensed technology
• Our leadership 

Are there any trigger events that have played key roles in shaping your organization’s road map?

Obtaining the license for the very powerful Narus nSystem technology, and the successful hiring of the best ex-Boeing cyber engineers. 

Do you have any new products getting ready to be rolled out into the market?

We have the USAM 2.0 due out in the next several months as well as the first of the products that we are extracting from the Narus nSystem, such as a very powerful network probe. 

Where do you see you and your company a couple of years from now?

When I look at the cyber landscape today, it seems dominated by a milieu of consolidation and acquisition by the large players such as Cisco, HP, FireEye and Palo Alto. I think we will be acquired in a few years for our unique technology combined with robust sales and a positive cash flow. 

Meet the virtuoso 

Paul Manley is a Ret. Colonel, USAF pilot and a former entrepreneur (Flexlite Inc), with years of leadership and administrative experience (Squadron CDR and Pentagon Div. Chief). He Served in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and was Former Director of Business Development at Boeing Missile Defense, L-3 Space and Navigation, and Viecore FSD. Paul holds a Top Secret Security Clearance and a BS degree from the US Air Force Academy and an MS from the National War College.

“We seek solutions from system level thinking and perspectives. We know how to build seamlessly integrated complex systems.”