Securing the future of enterprises, securing the cloud: Graphus

With more and more enterprises using cloud based communication and collaboration applications, providing security for the same is turning out to be a major concern. Historically hackers have targeted vulnerabilities in systems and networks to hack into corporate networks but increasingly they are now targeting users behind the keyboard through social engineering techniques like phishing, spear phishing, email spoofing, and email scams, to achieve the same goals. Conventional technologies and employee training mitigates only a small percentage of these cyber attacks. According to the FBI, US businesses lost $3.3 billion over 15 months during 2015-16 to these types of attacks. To deal with these, Manoj Srivastava and Vishal Dixit founded Graphus.

Graphus is an automated security platform that uses patented AI technology to protect communication and collaboration applications like G Suite and Office 365 from cyber attacks. It eliminates 99% of the cyber attacks with no intervention necessary from IT administrators. Graphus employs artificial intelligence technology via graph theory, machine learning, and big data algorithms, to establish a Trust Graph™ between people, devices, and networks to detect threats. Their mission is to make simple, powerful, and automated cloud security accessible to any size business, anywhere in the world.

A humble beginning

In less than a year since its launch, Graphus had its first product release. Private beta customers tested the initial release until September 2016. Public beta was launched in October 2016 and lasted until March 2017. The general availability release of Graphus for G Suite was announced in March 2017. Since then Graphus has on-boarded several customers on its security platform and is actively protecting them against phishing, spear phishing, email scams, email spoofing, malware, and social engineering attacks.

Hurdles in the road less travelled

Initially, the biggest hurdle that the firm encountered was convincing its potential investors that it is feasible to build a product that can keep social engineering attacks in check. Given that detecting social engineering attacks is a very hard problem, investors wanted a proof that the technology would actually work and detect attacks. Founders overcame this hurdle by bootstrapping and self-funding the product development. At the same time, they produced a highly accurate and fully automated product that provides peace of mind for organizations dealing with cyber attacks.

The firm had a team of dedicated and experienced developers who had built and launched several products. The team’s strength lay on the fact that it knew how to efficiently leverage virtual teams and get development done on a schedule and within constrained budgets. Deep understanding of the problem, clarity of thought in how to execute the implementation, belief in the vision of the value the firm would create and perseverance against all odds has enabled Graphus to reach their current status.

Almost three years into the journey, the firm has realized the importance of public relations. The firm believes that it is important for businesses to know about Graphus as a team and how their years of experience has enabled them to create a solution for one of the biggest cyber security challenges of the our times.

What sets them apart?

Usually enterprise-grade security solutions are complex and require heavy investment in experts. This inhibits adoption by small and mid-market enterprises that are the most vulnerable to cyber threats. Graphus runs in the cloud and integrates with G Suite or Office 365 through cloud APIs. There is no software to download or hardware to install. There also isn’t any fixed upfront costs and customers are only charged for the number of user-accounts protected. It is activated with one-click and immediately starts protecting the customer. Unlike other one-size fits-all security products, the patented AI technology offered by Graphus tailors itself to the unique attack surface of the organization and thus provides protection that’s automatically customized for the organization.

Client satisfaction is the key

The target client for Graphus is a small or mid-market enterprise with headcount in the range of 100 to 5000 employees and at least $500,000 IT budget in place. The client is either a user of Google G Suite or Microsoft Office 365. Since the problem cuts across all sectors so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the firm is sector agnostic. If you need to protect your organization from falling victim to cybercrime then you need Graphus.

One of their most noteworthy customers, Martin Engineering has over 800 employees in nine countries with about 25% of those in the US. The company provides bulk material handling services for mining, oil, pulp and paper and other industries. According to theIT Manager Mike Komnick, “We make moving bulk material, cleaner, safer and more effective. The simplicity of the interface and the real-time email notifications are what drew me to the Graphus product initially. I was set-up and ready to go in minutes. The directions were concise and laid out perfectly. Spear phishing attacks were three times higher than we thought we were seeing. I had no idea there was that much hitting our users. Eye opening is a good way to word it. Shocking might be another way. We thought we had a better handle on it than we did. I would definitely recommend the product. This gives you an additional layer of security that requires very little interaction so we can keep our work day moving along.”

The road ahead

As of now the firm is focused on expanding their customer base in US and India. Phishing, spear phishing, spoofed emails, email scams, malware attacks are a huge problem affecting businesses in US and in India alike. In the near future, the firm intends to expand the functionality of the product to include insider threats and threats from the supply-chain. They will also integrate Graphus with other communication and collaboration cloud apps beyond G Suite and Office 365. Thus the future does look promising for Graphus.

Meet the leaders

Manoj Srivastava is the co-founder and CEO. He has over two decades of experience in Internet, cloud computing, big data, and cyber security industry. He has four US patents to his name. He holds Masters in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from IIT (Roorkee).

Vishal Dixit is the co-founder and CTO. He is an experienced product-engineering leader with expertise in developing high quality software products. Also an IITian (Kanpur), Vishal is an alumnus of the University of Baltimore. His expertise includes cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and cyber security.

"No matter what the size of your business is, we bring you simple, powerful and automated cloud applications security”