Roy Stephan, PierceMatrix CEO and Founder
What opportunity did you recognize that led to the founding of PierceMatrix?
Roy Stephan: The opportunity for small and medium businesses to understand security on a global level. Large companies and governments can throw thousands of security professionals at a problem, and most security tools are designed for those organizations. With PierceMatrix we provide a unique workflow that offer SMBs a more comprehensive view of their security, including helping them identify malicious actors on their network and remove them.
What specific value does addressing that problem provide for your customers?
Stephan: By understanding how global threats are affecting them, PierceMatrix users can lower their security risk and lower their liability. Any business that is not reviewing its log files is carrying excess liability because the firewall logs (and other security devices) are documenting suspected attacks. PierceMatrix helps companies reduce that liability by automatically reading logs and helping with prioritization and remediation.
Why aren’t current solutions addressing this problem effectively?
Stephan: Most of the products in security are focused on solving niche problems for large businesses. There are very few that recognize the importance of educating and assisting small and medium businesses. Gartner selected us a Cool Vendor because of our unique approach to reducing data and helping small businesses focus their efforts. The industry standard is generating large volumes of new data for the user to sift through internally. This is just not an option for small and medium sized businesses that don’t have skilled resources available.
What makes your approach different and better from existing approaches?
Stephan: Our approach is to bring SMBs a cloud-based security model that bridges several capabilities including SIEM, TIP, Incident response and remediation. In particular, we provide an understanding of threats already present in your log files, as well as incident tracking and remediation through an automatable button.
What about your team’s background puts you in a unique position to succeed?
Stephan: The PierceMatrix team combines Artificial Intelligence and security expertise. These are two separate fields of study, but an essential combination to address today’s information security challenges. The CEO has 20 years of experience in building companies and divisions in the security world, and the CTO has 20 years of experience building artificial intelligence for the US military, FAA, and AT&T.
What are some of the milestones you have passed since graduating from Mach37?
Stephan: When we graduated M37 we had an early beta product. Now we have a functioning system with customers in the ISP, MSP, Finance, and Defense Industrial Base markets. We were recently selected as a Gartner Cool Vendor, as well as being selected as one of the top 6 emerging technologies for FinTech by the Partnership for New York City.
What one aspect of the Mach37 programs did you personally find most beneficial?
Stephan: Helping me run a business. I have built products, divisions, even companies as a technologist, but M37 taught me how to build out the non-tech aspects such as finance, HR, sales, legal, etc.Learn more about PierceMatrix here.