We've been slowly but surely revealing our mission and purpose to the world but today we announce a giant leap toward that goal. Cylance today announced the acquisition of SpearPoint Security Services, a recognized leader in security assessments, training, red teaming, design review and discovery technology in the ICS space. The San Jose, California-based company and its founders Billy Rios and Terry McCorkle, will join Cylance's efforts to secure the world's most critical infrastructure.
SpearPoint will be integrated into Cylance's services and research teams to enhance its own PresponseSM service line including assessment and discovery capabilities. With Cylance's active discovery technology, customers can assess ICS technology and determine the points of threat exposure. Much of the world's critical infrastructure runs on industrial control systems, and the security of these systems is largely dependent on air-gapped network architectures that are often flawed. With the acquisition of SpearPoint, Cylance's services and technology will now perform automated and continuous discovery of these systems proactively.
"We have a moral obligation to secure the world's most sensitive networks and systems," said Billy Rios, Co-Founder and CEO of SpearPoint. "Cylance was the clear next step for us." Terry McCorkle, Co-Founder and CTO of SpearPoint added, "The companies that manufacture, deploy and manage these systems care about security but they often do not have the expertise and training to do much about it. Cylance will educate those in need and empower them to secure their sensitive networks."
Billy and Terry shook up the ICS world in 2011 by revealing their research of Internet connected ICS systems and their vulnerabilities, most of which had not been patched prior to discovery. Why? Because ICS vendors are struggling with security in a foundational way. They haven't spent the last 20 years building security into their design, architecture, build and testing processes. So they have some serious catchup. Yesterday at an industrial controls conference in Miami, Billy and Terry demonstrated a brand new discovery of theirs on the Philips XPER system.
This biomedical diagnostic monitoring system has an 0-day vulnerability present in its running service allowing an attacker to take over the system and gain SYSTEM level privileges. Additionally, the duo discovered hard coded passwords readily reveal-able. Currently there is no patch for either of these discoveries. This means healthcare providers need to scan their networks, discover these systems and mitigate this risk with packet filtering, configuration controls, and strong credential management. As always, Cylance is actively working with DHS, the FDA and the affected vendor to help address these critical vulnerabilities.
In addition to the acquisition of SpearPoint, Cylance is also announcing two new members of the Cylance team. Eric Cornelius is the former Deputy Director and Chief Technical Analyst for the Control Systems Security Program at the Department of Homeland Security. He joins the team as Director of Critical Infrastructure/ICS, bringing a wealth of ICS knowledge to Cylance, having written the book on incident response for the market. "I'm tremendously excited to be a part of such a talented and motivated team working on some of the world's most interesting and important problems," said Eric Cornelius.
"Eric's extensive knowledge of critical infrastructure and those who attack it will be brought to bear at Cylance, as he leads our team of experts in securing the world's critical systems,' said Stuart McClure, CEO/President of Cylance, Inc.
We are also proud to announce Glenn Chisholm, former CISO of Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications provider will serve as Cylance's Vice President of Products and CSO. Glenn is all too familiar with the world of critical infrastructure. At Telstra, Glenn was under constant attack and was responsible for protecting the organization and its customers against all threat vectors and actors. "With Glenn's experience in protecting the telecommunications infrastructure in Australia as a part of Telstra, we have an amazing team of industrial control experts" continued Stuart.
"We were a constant target at Telstra, where we deployed thousands of critical infrastructure systems around the globe to provide service to our customers," said Glenn Chisholm, VP of Products, Cylance, Inc. "I'm all too familiar with the current cybersecurity issues that plague global organizations and consumers, and the need for a fundamental shift in order to protect from these constant threats."
"With this company and talent acquisition, Cylance is one step closer to realizing our mission to secure the world," said McClure, former Global CTO of McAfee and original lead-author of "Hacking Exposed". "We see and feel the pain of our customers every day, and we are assembling a team beyond reproach to definitively empower them to stop the bad guys."
Security assessments uncover your security weaknesses and incident response/forensics reveal when those weaknesses have been exploited but PresponseSM blends the two together to be truly Predictive, Preventative and Pre-incident. After all, don't you want to know how you'll be compromised BEFORE it happens? Don't be left in the dark, Cylance's PresponseSM takes a proactive, holistic approach to security based on advanced pre-detection of an attack.
