Yasir Khalid, StrikeReady Founder and CEO: “We have built an extremely powerful SaaS-based platform that engages, supports and informs the defender with reasoning, knowledge, and automation”

In the digitally sophisticated world we live in, firewalls or antivirus software no longer stop cyber attacks. Enterprises are constantly looking for new ways to defend their businesses because cyber attacks are no longer a question of “What if” it happens; instead, it is “When” will it happen. Experts are advising companies to have advanced cyber defense solutions in place to protect crucial data as well as everyone’s interest. Companies now more than ever hold an enormous amount of sensitive data like business insights, customer data, and financial data. Companies must adhere to all regulations and protect the data under them to deliver an outstanding experience to the consumers.

Globally there are various companies delivering excellent cyber security solutions, but StrikeReady stands out from the rest. StrikeReady was founded with a simple mission in mind: to empower defenders. Over the past decade, Yasir Khalid, the Founder, and CEO of StrikeReady, has worked in the field of cyber security. It became very evident to the Founder that lack of skilled talent and little or no collaboration among defenders was the main root cause of an organization’s high risk of being compromised. As defenders lost ground to attackers and were working harder and harder, while attackers got better and better, we realized that something had to be drastically changed. In mid-2019, a team of cybersecurity enthusiasts from different parts of the world came together created StrikeReady so that defenders could do that: work smarter, not harder. The platform enhances defenders’ knowledge, skill, consistency, and speed, which enables organizations to significantly reduce their security risk.

In conversation with Yasir Khalid, the Founder and CEO of StrikeReady

Q. Can you explain about your services in brief?

Managing organizational risk involves two main aspects. First and foremost is proactive - threat hunting, threat intelligence operationalization, pen testing, vulnerability management, attack simulation, etc. Next is reactive - incident response, forensics, and more. Today, organizations of all size find it hard to balance resources between proactive and reactive security programs. As a result, StrikeReady developed a platform that enables defenders to address two aspects of security at once, but the platform’s unique feature is its ability to guide and assist them as they carry out their tasks while learning from the environment in which they operate and from their actions in real-time. The StrikeReady platform democratized this learning to aid defenders in increasing their skills and knowledge and helping them scale much better. Basically, if an organization is looking for a platform that can reduce their risk, eliminate technology sprawl, boost ROI on existing security investments, and significantly reduce the stress and burden on their security analysts, then StrikeReady is the platform they should consider.

Q. How has emerging technologies contributed to the success of your business?

As a cybersecurity company specializing in the application of artificial intelligence, our team is constantly at the forefront of technological developments. With the belief that new technologies can create real value for our customers, we have been driven to use them from the beginning. Through Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML), we are constantly developing and evaluating new ways to analyze data, streamline processes, reduce risk, as well as improve efficiency and effectiveness of defenders. Innovative technology helps us stay on top of the curve as we push forward and improve. StrikeReady’s ethos stems from this approach.

Q. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, they find new, unexpected ways to target systems. How do you gather insights to stay updated?

Today’s threats require constant attention and insight gathering just to keep up with cybercriminals. StrikeReady is designed to take the insight gathering off your hands. Our platform keeps an eye on your network 24/7 and can react in real-time when threats are detected and quarantine them before they take down your entire network. In addition, the platform’s proactive capability helps organizations to bolster their security posture and reduce their exposure to threats. StrikeReady’s AI learns about new threats and attack patterns and makes this information available to its entire customer base based on both incident data and proactive operational information.

Q. How do you monitor the performance of the solution? What guidance and direction did you find most effective to train individuals to use your solution?

StrikeReady has a dedicated team of engineers who are focused on continually improving and updating the platform. They proactively isolate potential problems and develop solutions to ensure that the product is always working at peak performance. With StrikeReady, you get the benefit of an AI-driven cybersecurity platform that helps your team fight back against even the most advanced cyberattacks. And all of this is done through a natural language interface that makes it easy to train employees on all aspects of cyber.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Last year, StrikeReady came out of stealth mode and introduced the industry’s first cognitive security platform designed to modernize security operations using next-generation threat management and incident response capabilities. Among its core features was a digital cybersecurity analyst (CARA) that was designed to increase defenders’ skill, knowledge, and to assist them with automation. Our goal this year is to enhance all the use cases that are currently deployed across our global customer base, including Incident Management, Threat Intelligence, and its Operationalization, and Attack Surface Management, which includes Security Assessment, Dynamic Asset Discovery, and Risk-Based Vulnerability Prioritization. As our customer base grows, the aggregated intelligence generated from all analyst interactions and insights enhances our automation-centric use cases to deliver better results at scale.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Our AI, threat research, and engineering teams are continuously developing new features to address new use cases for our clients, thereby adding value to our product for them and enabling them to stay ahead of the game in an ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. All of these new capabilities can be accessed instantly and seamlessly through our SaaS platform without any overhead. As we move forward, we have some really exciting innovations that will help our customers maximize the ROI of their current cybersecurity investment while consolidating vendor sprawl and easing pressure on their security analyst teams with the skills of our digital cybersecurity analyst - CARA.

"No matter what defender you are — SOC Analyst, Threat Intel Analyst, Security Engineer, Red Teamer, etc., you all can leverage our technology to perform your day-to-day tasks with ease and at lightning speed”

Meet the leader behind the success of StrikeReady

Yasir Khalid, the Founder and CEO of StrikeReady, has over fifteen patents in cybersecurity. He led FireEye’s Zero-Day detection service and developed the company’s second-generation threat detection products in his ten-year tenure. Following FireEye, Yasir built a deep learning-based threat detection team at BlueHexagon.