Firebreak, when your firewall fails: Arctic Wolf Networks Inc

“Cyber war skips battlefield. Systems that people rely upon, from bankls to air defense radars, are accessible from cyberspace and can be quickly taken over or knocked out without first defeating a country’s traditional defense”-R. Clarke & R. Knake”

The bygone eras saw network admins depending on their firewalls to establish secure perimeters with antivirus and signature defenses to detect known bad preventing potential loss of data, etc. But what when such preventions fail?

Believing that ‘your only hope is detection’, Arctic Wolf recognizes that detection is hard due to the amount of data to collect, correlate and analyze with security analyst skills often in short supply, as detection requires the combination of technology, processes and people for success. The result being, the company’s initiatives and impressive innovations help balance preventive and detection defenses that occurs in four phases encompassing collection of a rich set of data, analyzing the data (technology, process, people), reducing big data to relevant actionable intelligence and daily repetition of these cycles.
With offices located across Silicon Valley, California and Ontario, Canada, the company founded in 2012, delivers actionable security intelligence specific to customer networks from security engineers without the cost or complexity of internal DIY SIEM projects.

Arctic Wolf delivers the business advantages of cloud/SaaS solution delivery, zero false positives for faster time to value and security engineers with expertise and experience acting as an extension of the customer’s IT security team at a fractional cost of internal DIY projects.

Making security intelligence relevant to customer networks
“As a managed security service with a pay-as-you-go subscription, our target clientele includes companies between 20 and 10,000 employees. We have seen both healthcare and manufacturing as industries benefiting from our managed SIEM service. We provide more than a security point solution or a managed service that pumps out trouble tickets; you work with a security engineer you know that provides security expertise as an extension of your team”, says Founder Brian NeSmith.
Providing a managed “firebreak” cloud service for detection and response, team Arctic Wolf collects the customer’s security event information and the context around it. The security engineers then analyze the data to reduce false positives, bringing about the end result of relevant actionable security intelligence, fast time to value and peace of mind from a third party monitoring.

The Arctic Wolf Advantage
As news headlines continue highlighting the rising cyber security issues, there is a pressing need to achieve the goal of continuous security and organizations must balance technology, process and people across preventive and detection defenses for the same. It is in such a situation that Arctic Wolf steps in to provide the following:
• Managed cloud architecture and network sensors for data collection
• Security Engineers (SEs) with detection expertise and big data skills
• Service includes SIEM, IDS, Vulnerability Assessment and Inventory
• Big data architecture (ELK-based) with cloud-based data storage
• Custom alerting, reports, monitoring, audits, incident response tracking and validation, etc
• Annual service with no capital outlay or hardware/software management
• Extension of IT security team at a fractional cost of internal DIY projects
In fact, an IT manufacturing customer who has availed its services says, “What would have taken me six hours to resolve was provided in five minutes by my firebreak security engineer.”

When prevention fails, you need detection
Analysts have noted and predicted an IT security investment shift into detective defenses like continuous monitoring, however the public at large has yet to recognize this balance between defenses. Taking cognizance of the same, Arctic Wolf currently focused on US and Canada plans to expand to new regions based upon demand in the near future.

“We have years in front of us to mature, market and support the solution. Breadth of new data sources adds more context and visibility through variety, plus the issue of current sources increasing in volume and velocity. In the end data veracity enables our service to remove false positives and provide relevant actionable security intelligence to customers”, adds Co-founder Kim Tremblay.

Knowing the Key Executives
Brian NeSmith, Co-Founder & CEO
With over 20 years of experience, most recently as former CEO of Blue Coat Systems, the graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering, Brian, has led Arctic Wolf to reach new heights with his able guidance. Prior to founding Arctic Wolf, he served as the President & CEO of CacheFlow, CEO of Ipsilon Networks and product management and marketing at Newbridge Networks.

Kim Tremblay
Co-Founder and VP of R&D
With over 20 years of experience, including 10 years with Blue Coat Systems, Kim brings in expertise and plays a vital role in the day to day activities at Arcticwolf. She has also held Director of Engineering and project management roles in a wide variety of industries including Air Traffic Control, Defense Systems, Aerospace and Software Configuration management and holds a Bachelors Degree in Math and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.