An Interview with Don Ritzman, Ghost Systems, Inc. CEO: ‘We’re Committed to Creating a Positive Impact’

“We continually strive to change the fundamental dynamics of the war between cyber-criminals and the good guys by reformulating the fundamental structure of the Internet.”

It’s not a question of if – but when – an individual or organization will experience a serious security breach. Cyber criminals are using more sophisticated and targeted attacks to steal everything from valuable intellectual property to the sensitive personal and financial information of individuals, customers, partners, and employees. Their motivations run the gamut from financial to political to retaliatory. With enough time and money, they can breach the security defenses of even the largest enterprises. And, a poorly contained breach and/or botched response have the potential to cost millions to a business or perhaps kill it entirely, ruin personal and professional reputations, and even take down an entire country.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Ghost Systems, Inc.

Ghost Systems was established to support the Financial Services and Banking; Legal; Healthcare/Pharma; Critical Infrastructure and Energy; Mid-Market Enterprise, and The Internet of Things (IoT) markets – the most vulnerable markets for cyber-thefts today.

The company was incorporated in January 2014 and is headquartered in Nevada, USA.

Don Ritzman, Ghost Systems, Inc. CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Ghost Systems’ SafePlace Ecosystem™ is designed from the ground up to be resilient and “Secure by Design”. The tightly integrated Ecosystem – with its Jibberish™ network mesh is designed to mitigate the nine primary attack vectors, eliminate security breaches and provide the foundation for “The Internet of Trust™.” Ghost’s secure, flexible, and user definable interface, which has been third-party tested and is impenetrable – virtually guarantees network infrastructure and the information that is transported across it is secure.

When installed into an organization, the SafePlace Ecosystem “Ghostifies™” the network and creates a SafePlace™ in which the organization can safely communicate with its customers, partners, or entire communities of common interest. This dramatically enhances the data availability, confidentiality, and integrity while preventing unauthorized access or theft of digital information – whether in-flight or at-rest.

Ghost – in cooperation with several bellwether companies – developed industry-specific workflows. Each workflow is easily added into existing enterprise environments, providing an economical way to ensure all information shared and stored is absolutely secure. Fork-lift upgrades to add cybersecurity into your organization are not necessary with SafePlace Ecosystem’s workflow templates.

It’s safe to mention that “The Internet of Trust™” employs proprietary technologies to provide a highly resilient and secure network and communications ecosystem.

Mr Ritzman explains the firm’s overall mission, the steps Ghost undertake to ensure the clients receive the best possible outcome, and what differentiates the company from competitors.

“Here at Ghost Systems, our mission is to authoritatively develop and maintain a holistic, future-proof cybersecurity infrastructure – the SafePlace Ecosystem™. It’s built to the very highest modern standards by a team of highly experienced specialists, using the best-in-class patented technologies that are robust and secure.”

“To ensure we succeed in our mission, the company uses six-sigma processes. Where six-sigma doesn’t fit our business processes, we use company-developed processes specifically tailored to our business, instead.”

“Our key to successful execution is smart, hard-working people throughout the organization. With these people in place, Ghost functions like an efficient machine and successfully executes programs that meet our customers’ requirements.”

“As for what differentiates us from our competitors, staff and technology are Ghost’s two primary differentiators. Ghost has a world-class business and technology team including several of the finest developers of cybersecurity technologies in the world today. These team members include a co-author of the Orange Book, a distinguished cryptography and identity expert, and the designer of the first-ever distributed OTP. It’s genuine to mention that our technology is unmatched in the world today.”

When discussing the worldwide cybersecurity industry currently, Mr Ritzman provides us with an overview, going into detail about the challenges and outside influences that are affecting it.

“Cybercrime is the new pandemic. Sophisticated cybercrime malware is available to virtually anyone who wants to use it for nefarious purposes – it’s become a destructive and potentially deadly commodity. Five minutes on the dark-web and you too can become a cyber-thief for $1.40, a common-off-the-shelf (COTS) computer with a dark-web browser downloaded from the Internet at no charge and a standard network connection.”

“Adding to this problem are the “nation states” which are investing $billions to create new, more powerful and highly destructive cyber-weapons to use for nefarious reasons as well as for use against their enemies in this new cyber-war which the world is facing with greater frequency each day. We’ve already seen large portions of entire infrastructure dramatically impacted and, in a few cases, entire continents shut off from communications with the outside world. And this is just the opening salvo of what could become an all-out cyber-centered slug-fest – one that ends with dire consequences for the loser in the war.”

The Internet was never designed to do what the world does with it today. As a result, the very fabric of the worldwide web is fundamentally incapable of providing even the basic security for transactions and so is the main reason for such a dramatic rise of cyber-attacks and cyber-thefts. And it’s only getting worse.

Conventional cyber security solutions are fundamentally “Hackable by Design.” It’s impossible to construct a cohesive secure environment using a hodgepodge of “point solutions.”

“The challenge is the security tools in the market today do not provide adequate protection against these powerful cyber-weapons. Security architectures largely grew organically over the past 10 years, as organizations addressed a variety of new threats and tactics. This resulted in an army of deployed technologies like firewalls, IDS/IPS, network proxies, gateways, sandboxes, endpoint suites, etc. Over time, this patchwork approach became more difficult to manage and significantly less effective at blocking legitimate threats. You cannot cobble together a comprehensive cyber-security solution using any of the current tools available and expect to succeed against the sophisticated cyber-weapons being deployed by the bad guys. The real proof of this is that the cyber-thieves are winning the battle and unfortunately will continue at greater frequency and at more destructive levels if nothing changes.”

Looking ahead to what the future holds for Ghost Systems, Mr Ritzman reveals what developments he foresees within the industry, and how the firm will adapt around these changes.

“Cybersecurity as a whole is ever-changing. Cyber-criminals continually invest billions of dollars developing malware. As a result, they are very successful pulling off large cyber-thefts costing billions of dollars in damage and personal losses to hundreds of millions of individuals. This continues to get worse as they gain more knowledge and experience.”

“Existing cybersecurity problems telegraph what’s needed for security in the future. Specifically, enterprises need a comprehensive solution that offers scalability, protects against both known and unknown threats, automates manual processes, and replaces a patchwork of ineffective tools with an integrated set of security services – in short, they need the Ghost built SafePlace™ Ecosystem.”

“Ghost continually builds cybersecurity solutions capable of preventing attacks. We invest heavily in R&D, constantly updating cyber-defenses using modern techniques and technologies to mitigate cyber-attacks.”

“We continually strive to change the fundamental dynamics of the war between cyber-criminals and the good guys by reformulating the fundamental structure of the Internet. Our “The Internet of Trust” is built to make a difference, providing a safe environment for individuals and businesses alike.”

About | Don Ritzman

Don Ritzman serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Ghost Systems, Inc.

“Ghost continually builds cybersecurity solutions capable of preventing attacks. We invest heavily in R&D, constantly updating cyber-defenses using modern techniques and technologies to mitigate cyber-attacks.”